There are two very interesting pieces on history this weekend. The first appeared in the Friday AFR Review and the second by Chris Berg in the Sunday Age.
The first piece is by a history teacher explaining why kids don’t know any history:
The main tenet of a child-centred view of history teaching is the idea that pupils should not be “passive” recipients of a teacher’s knowledge, but “active” individuals empowered to find things out for themselves. As a result, “chalk and talk” teaching from the front is heavily discouraged. After a senior member of staff observed one of my lessons, I was told that my role was to be the “guide on the side” rather than the “sage on the stage”.
Instead of learning through listening to teachers or reading books, pupils are expected to do so through projects. It did not take me long to work out why pupils are so ignorant of British history, despite spending over a year studying it (as laid down by the national curriculum). To study the Norman Conquest, pupils would re-enact the Battle of Hastings in the playground, conduct a classroom survey to create their own Domesday Book, and make motte-and-bailey castles out of cereal boxes. Medieval England would be studied through acting out the death of Thomas Becket, and creating a boardgame to cover life as a medieval peasant. For the Industrial Revolution, pupils pitched inventions to Dragons’ Den and lessons on the British Empire culminated in the design of a commemorative plate showing whether it was or was not a “force for good”.
Such tasks allow pupils to learn about history in an enjoyable and engaging way – or so the theory goes. In reality, all content and understanding of the past is sucked out, and the classroom begins to resemble the playground. An unfortunate side-effect is that pupils are frequently confused by the inevitable anachronisms involved in making history “relevant”. “Sir, how many Victorians would have had a TV?” I was asked. Imaginative tasks and projects can be excellent supplements to a history lesson, but when they become the mainstay of classroom activity, the consequences are disastrous.
Shocking. All true too, I suspect. In this case accuracy matters a lot. (Read the whole thing – it is excellent).
Okay – what about the movies?
Spielberg’s tale of the constitutional amendment to end slavery shrouds Abraham Lincoln’s legacy in myth. The Civil War is the ultimate ”just” war. It was fought to end the vile institution of slavery. Hard to think of a more noble cause than that.
But Spielberg whitewashes some of the great stains on the Lincoln presidency. The film obscures, even ridicules, any suggestion Lincoln reduced American liberties during the Civil War.
To the extent that historical knowledge is so sparse – does it really matter that a movie that doesn’t pass itself off as a documentary ignores some issues or whitewashes others?
There are thousands of WWII movies that are inaccurate. Inglorious Basterds even managed to have an alternate ending to the war. The movie 300 had a stylised comic book approach to the battle of Thermopylae (not surprising given that it was an adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic). Yet more people would know at least something about a very important battle from a highly inaccurate movie (actually fanciful) than they would ever have learned at school. At the same time people who really enjoy the movie version of history then often seek out other information and then get the more nuanced versions of events.
But Chris also points us to the movie Zero Dark Thirty.
In Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow controversially suggests torture played a necessary role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Given that this suggestion is both untrue and politically provocative, Zero Dark Thirty has been widely condemned. Bigelow’s film seems to implicitly approve of human rights abuses in the name of the ‘War on Terror’.
I don’t know if torture was necessary or not but I think this matters more than inaccuracies in a movie about historical events. Looking as he does at the attitude to human rights and the rule of law Chris suggests there is no difference between the two.
But that’s the thing about legal rights. Even bad people deserve the protection of the law. There’s no question that modern Islamic terrorists are bad. But their sheer badness doesn’t make indefinite detention or torture justified. The justice of a war says nothing about whether rights should be protected.
Lincoln’s choices during the Civil War had long-term consequences. Memory of Lincoln helped justify Woodrow Wilson’s even more considerable rights abuses during the First World War. And Lincoln’s legacy has been regularly used to defend depravities in the War on Terror – if the greatest president did it, then surely so can George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Lincoln’s memory should be a sensitive issue.
That is a powerful argument – but I’m still uneasy. Movies that contain historically inaccurate material create an opportunity for further investigation and discovery. Movies that contain inaccurate material on current affairs, I suspect, don’t create those same opportunities.
This reminds me of the masterful promotion of “self-serve” at petrol stations as a good thing.
Waterboarding did play a role – a crucial role – and this has now been conceded by Leon Panetta. By the way, waterbvoarding must be the only form of “torture” that several critics (including Christopher Hitchens) voluntarily endured. They weren’t up for having a cattle prod shoved up the bottoms, oddly enough.
C.L.
10 Feb 13 at 2:17 pm
I like the first article, but I’m diffident about the second.
Historical fiction is … fiction. You change the facts to make the story better. It’s a tradition which goes back at least to Homer; Shakespeare did it incessantly. If it’s good enough for these guys, I think we can forgive Zero-Dark-Thirty and Lincoln. The point of these films – just like Shakespeare’s histories of the Wars of the Roses – is to entertain and propagandise.
The question isn’t whether a particular film whitewashes history – as fiction the point is to whitewash history. The question is whether you agree with the particular propaganda.
PSC
10 Feb 13 at 2:25 pm
This is based on the educational theory that learning must be fun, and student driven.
Neither of these are true.
‘Enjoyment’ is a by-product (or should be a by-product) of the act of learning, just as people enjoy their achievements in the workplace.
The point of school is to school. It might be fun, it might not, but that’s not the core mission. Of course we don’t want to make school a horrible experience but that is more a product of the compulsory nature and the mostly socialised institutions, not the manner of knowledge transmission.
Furthermore student centred learning doesn’t work, just as exploratory, student driven science lessons (‘sandpit learning’) doesn’t work. There’s pretty unequivocal empirical data on this point. If science was that obvious it wouldn’t have taken so long to develop to the current state. It needs someone to stand up in front of the class and spell it out in simple terms.
dd
10 Feb 13 at 2:27 pm
What DD said.
My PhD is in history. I’m not doing it for a job, or for improved prospects. I’m doing it becuase I love research and discovering new connections and new insights into how the world works.
So I’ve kept a close eye on what psses for history in the kid’s school curriculum, and it’s crappy to awful. In the public school system it’s non-existant. They do not teach. They certainly do not teach history.
Mk50 of Brisbane
10 Feb 13 at 2:33 pm
I think any movie that passes itself off as true or historically accurate should attempt to be just that.
Sure, conversations have to be made up but relevant events that did happen should not be left out, and events that were known not to happen shouldn’t be added. It’s not that hard.
As far as ‘torture’ goes, governments need to do whatever is necessary to protect their citizens. In the ticking bomb scenario, I’d rather apply pain to a terrorist than allow Australians to die.
jupes
10 Feb 13 at 2:45 pm
The problem is compounded when movies made to “entertain and propagandise” are imported into the classroom as a teaching aid, often becoming the foundation of that particular topic. Andrew Bolt rails against Philip Noyce’s Rabbit Proof Fence being shown to schoolchildren and being treated almost as a documentary- and he has a point. Showing films (especially unbalanced, emotive, manipulative ones) should not replace classroom teaching.
Cold-Hands
10 Feb 13 at 2:52 pm
Pupil-centred teaching is about as sensible as the much outed patient-focussed care which was all the rage some years back.
Sounds plausible (which is enough for some!) but when you break it down it is madness.
You want to be focussed on the best result, not the individual in question. It effectively tries to hand responsibility to the subject.
mct
10 Feb 13 at 2:53 pm
[...] Catallaxy, the IPA’s Sinclair Davidson has some related thoughts on historical memory and [...]
Lincoln, Spielberg, and civil liberties | Freedomwatch
10 Feb 13 at 3:02 pm
Jack Bauer would have completed the job of tracking and terminating Osama in a fraction of the time. And with a clear moral compass.
Hristos
10 Feb 13 at 3:09 pm
The self-centred learning ideal (student-centred) is the result of a long legacy of utopian progressive idiocy. Rousseau and Deweys theories (to name onlt two) have created a generation of teachers who have never experienced chalk and talk done professionally. Chalk and talk teaching, lecturing, is perfected over many years. It requires real and substantial knowledge. Most teachers today are not capable. The modern ideal of teachers being ‘facilitators of learning experiences’ – is an insult to teachers that most fail to be offended by. Most just aren’t that into knowledge. Those who do are unlikely to make public comment for fear of the whole system being against them. As for rote learning, I’ll give you the tip: it wasn’t boring for kids, it was satisfying to know some facts. It was lazy teachers who got bored.
Turtle
10 Feb 13 at 3:18 pm
Does Chris Berg mean enhanced interrogation isn’t torture or does he believe incorrectly that they enhanced interrogation was not crucial in eventually locating bin Laden?
You cannot tell.
Personally I think the portrayal of water-boarding in that movie was simply ridiculous and portrayed in a (dishonestly) maximally negative way.
The movie correctly noted that the information obtained was crucial in locating bin Laden.
The CIA says it used it only 3 suspects: Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, in 2002 and 2003 early on to save lives of likely imminent Al-Queda targets.
Waterboarding in particular was rigidly controlled and administered.
They were legal-ed up to the eyeballs and the people charged with performing it were very few in number and very well trained
I think enhanced interrogation was critical in dealing with obtaining ‘live’ information from anonymous terrorists who execute war by mass killing civilians as the main technique.
If my government could save the lives of my fellow innocent citizens by waterboarding I’d expect them to.
JamesK
10 Feb 13 at 3:23 pm
Lecturing is shit. People don’t even turn up, they read the notes, do the work and do the tutorial work, assignments and study.
You must have had a billy at high school. We were bored shitless. Yay. Another transfer to copy word for word.
.
10 Feb 13 at 3:24 pm
I understood it was fought to stop the southern states from seceding. Slavery was an issue used to unite a lot of people behind the war. Before the war they were a federation of independent states. The long term consequences of that war in terms of freedom have not been good.
Ellen of Tasmania
10 Feb 13 at 3:35 pm
But Dot, you probably still remember your times tables. (Along with a heap of ad jingles from your childhood.) Repetition is a great teacher.
Ellen of Tasmania
10 Feb 13 at 3:38 pm
Movies are rarely accurate. Much is changed retelling history. Reach for the Sky had a disclaimer at the beginning. Longest Day changed characters and combined others in the story telling. Lincoln was not alone in the matters of rights. Stanton comes to mind. Lincoln did not do more than seemed necessary to win the war. Wilson may have had other motives. FDR started early in bending rules.
stackja
10 Feb 13 at 3:39 pm
If you are teaching something like woodwork or metalwork, the only way to teach it properly is learning by doing. The wood is the real teacher, everything else just facilitates. Same with Engineering, and even with Science for that matter. Do the experiment, watch the results, think about what it means. I’m a big advocate of project based teaching, we used to build model bridges back in high school and test the load-to-weight ratio of the bridge over a fixed span distance… that’s real learning by doing.
On the other hand, History is one subject where you simply can’t just go back to World War I or the Great Depression to have a look at what it was like. Even the people at the time didn’t have a deep knowledge of what was going on. History is not a repeatable experiment. You can’t just write your own Diary of Anne Frank, all you can do is read what we do have.
Since History is an intrinsically different type of knowledge to Science, there’s every reason to take an intrinsically different approach.
Tel
10 Feb 13 at 3:55 pm
True Ellen
However I appreciate the limits to ROTE learning.
.
10 Feb 13 at 4:09 pm
Surely the point of school is whatever the parents and the kids decide it should be. After all, it’s their time, their money, and their lives.
I simply don’t accept the affront to liberty that any central planning office should be able to declare what constitutes a good quality education.
Tel
10 Feb 13 at 4:10 pm
Movie makers have no obligation to stick to historical facts. However if they use lots of artistic license (ie make things up), then they can’t claim that they are representing facts.
“based on a true story” is a phrase with lots of wiggle room.
dd
10 Feb 13 at 4:26 pm
Beevor disputes this assertion.
Rabz
10 Feb 13 at 4:26 pm
Fixed.
Rabz
10 Feb 13 at 4:30 pm
Means the resulting abomination bears no resemblance to the truth.
Rabz
10 Feb 13 at 4:32 pm
The famous defense of Lincoln’s era(IIRC): The constitution is not a suicide pact.
In principle I don’t object to torturing people to reveal the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, inasmuch I don’t object to torturing Pentagon officials if they refuse to reveal the location of the evidence of Osama bin Laden’s death
http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/5061
Perhaps a little bit of waterboarding would speed the process up?
As it is we have a far better idea of how Richard III was identified than OBL.
Lets worry about getting the bits of government that are supposed to function, to function. Before worrying about the esoteric matters of balancing human rights and martial law.
Grey
10 Feb 13 at 4:42 pm
Arrgh! It’s ‘wriggle room’, not bloody wiggle room! The alliteration is part of the term’s appeal.
I hate the bloody Wiggles.
/pedant
Steve of Ferny Hills
10 Feb 13 at 4:51 pm
There is a big market for primers and dummy’s guides to many eras of history.
One reason to study history is to avoid repeating its errors. Why reinvent when the advice and insight of countless experts is available.
Without expert advice and analytical tool, where should people start looking and what do they look for?
Knowledge grows through reviewing competing views and critical discussion and evaluation. A social process, not a solitary process of reinvention.
Jim Rose
10 Feb 13 at 4:54 pm
Yes – there’s a famous saying along the lines of “Those who know nothing of history are condemned to relive it.”
Which is why history (as opposed to historical revisionism) is not ‘taught’ nowadays in the settings we laughably refer to as schools.
A population largely composed* of illiterate, innumerate, ahistorical imbeciles is a hell of a lot more easy to control than a population that isn’t.
*85% – allowing a 15% nomenklatura
Rabz
10 Feb 13 at 5:11 pm
By including a torture plot arc, the producers put more bums on seats.
Lefties could go to zero dark thirty without felling guilty or apologising to chardonnay Left friends to collaborating in the defence of peace, democracy and tolerance.
Was it wise to suggest that enhanced interrogation was key to finding Bin Laden?
Does that not suggest the benefits of enhanced interrogations outweigh the costs?
Whose side are they on? The Republican Party reptiles or the anti-American Left?
Who is helped by spy thrillers suggesting that enhanced interrogation extracted timely intelligence relevant to public safety when more humane methods did not? U.S. public support for torture has risen significantly in the last few years to be a bare majority. was zero dark thirty black propoganda?
Artistic license made a long, boring man-hunt by inspector Plod techniques of following up every lead and checking everything over and over to identify a courier to Bin Laden into a story that was dramatic and interesting.
Jim Rose
10 Feb 13 at 5:28 pm
By the way, waterboarding must be the only form of “torture” that several critics (including Christopher Hitchens) voluntarily endured. They weren’t up for having a cattle prod shoved up the bottoms, oddly enough.
Yes of course, since there wasn’t an issue concerning whether cattle prod treatment would be torture. Did you expect Hitch to undergo every form of medieval torture — among which was included waterboarding — in order to make some kind of comparative study?
“Enhanced interrogation” is a bureaucratic euphemism. It’s sad to see Catallaxians using it. I thought people here called a spade a spade.
Sometimes — in very rare circumstances related to terrorism — Western nations may arguably have to use torture. If so, let’s be honest about what we’re doing, rather than cloak it in Orwellian newspeak.
If you disagree, answer this: would you be happy with State police forces waterboarding people as a standard part of the investigation of crime? No one could want police torturing people. But if it’s just “enhanced interrogation”, what’s wrong with that, eh?
Piett
10 Feb 13 at 5:34 pm
Maybe it would have been more interesting if it was about a couple of CIA agents blundering around pakistan asking the locals if they’d ever seen obama bin liner?
Then again, probably not.
Rabz
10 Feb 13 at 5:35 pm
Sorry, but when they throw away the rule book, so should we. It has to be done sometimes, as a matter of winning, perhaps surviving.
The argument about Geneva conventions has been re-run here and elsewhere many times. If they want them to apply, they have to abide by them as well.
If they don’t, the the ROE should just read “I don’t care how you do it. Get the bastards by whatever means.”
blogstrop
10 Feb 13 at 5:35 pm
Whether or not torture played a role in the hunt for bin laden, it clearly can be effective. I know I’d cave under it and am certain Chris Berg would also.
It wd be wonderful to learn that torture saved a city from massacre even if at the same time it makes us uneasy. The practice of torture is one that has been in evidence throughout history. Sometimes the practitioners are sadistic nazis or Stalinists but not always
Alan Moran
10 Feb 13 at 6:11 pm
Not as standard procedure. However yes for crimes where a life is at stake e.g. a serial killer or his accomplice has been caught but we don’t know where the little girl he abducted the night before is.
jupes
10 Feb 13 at 7:19 pm
An obvious fact that anyone with a big brother can tell you.
jupes
10 Feb 13 at 7:20 pm
I am for strict compliance with international law for modern Islamic terrorists.
The Hostages Trial was held from 8 July 1947 until 19 February 1948 at Nuremberg.
Also known as the “Southeast Case” because the defendants were all German generals leading the troops in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia, and they were charged as those responsible for the hostage-taking of civilians and wanton shootings of these hostages and of partisans. The tribunal concluded that
Bush 43 – the big softie that he was – stayed his hand on the long-standing international law stating that francs tireurs, upon capture, can be subjected to a field court martial and summary execution. This included David Hicks. How Hicks had any intelligence value is beyond me?
Jim Rose
10 Feb 13 at 8:31 pm
Good one, Jim.
blogstrop
10 Feb 13 at 8:34 pm
If we take 300 for example, that is not meant to be proper history. It is meant to be the story of Thermopylae as told around the campfires to young soldiers listening in awe to the grizzled veterans. So the movie 300 is a movie about the myth of Thermopylae but isn’t a movie about the history of Thermopylae.
Movies get altered in other ways too. To Hell and Back tones down Audie Murphy’s actual deeds because it was felt that if the actual heroics were shown that it would not be believed. A Bridge Too Far is also guilty of winding back the deeds of real heroes.Even then it got heavily criticised for making things up despite the fact that they were really taking things out.
Pauly
10 Feb 13 at 8:35 pm
I agree Jim.
Conservatives sometimes forget how the law works.
There is enough legally nasty stuff to fuck them over without harming our citizens.
.
10 Feb 13 at 8:39 pm
I have never understood why people care so much about torture. Everyone mentions it like its evil, but doesn’t blink an eye when they knowingly bomb civilian areas and kill civilians.
Munro
10 Feb 13 at 9:06 pm
In quite a few military cases the Nuremberg Trials were a case of victors justice.
As such, they demeaned us.
Winston Smith
10 Feb 13 at 9:08 pm
Spies, saboteurs and infiltrators are liable for summary field court martial under international law.
remember those germans dressed in american uniforms in the battle of the Bulge. court martialed and shot the next dawn after their capture. this put the german infiltrators still at large right off their mission!
Jim Rose
10 Feb 13 at 9:15 pm
Winston Smith, shawcross, the British prosecutor, went to great length in his opening address to explain how the trials were based in treaties that Germany signed before the war
BTW: Article 230 of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres required the Ottoman Empire to hand over to the Allied Powers the persons whose surrender may be required by the latter as being responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Ottoman Empire on August 1, 1914
Various Ottoman politicians, generals, and intellectuals were transferred to Malta where they were held for some three years while searches were made of archives in Constantinople, London, Paris and Washington to investigate the Armenian genocide.
The Inter-allied tribunal demanded by the Treaty of Sèvres never solidified and the detainees were eventually returned to Turkey in exchange for British citizens held hostage by Kemalist Turkey.
p.s The next time your leftie mates slag off Gallipoli and Anzac day note that On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing `a crime against humanity’ and promised punishment.
Jim Rose
10 Feb 13 at 9:21 pm
Jim
Can you explain the ANZAC Day thing in more detail?
.
10 Feb 13 at 9:25 pm
Torture is always wrong and demeans and corrupts the torturer and the government allowing it.
candy
10 Feb 13 at 9:30 pm
Jim, you will note my qualification was to Military cases.
I do not attempt to deny or make the case that Nazism was responsible for horrific crimes against humanity, and should have paid the ultimate price for their barbarous conduct.
And I don’t have any Leftie mates. How on earth did you get to that?
Winston Smith
10 Feb 13 at 9:40 pm
Blogstrop, “Frangapani” is a deliberate mispronunciation.
Winston Smith
10 Feb 13 at 9:42 pm
Yes. Far better to allow your own citizens to die rather than hurt the enemy.
jupes
10 Feb 13 at 9:43 pm
Jim Rose,
The downside of the franc-tireur law is exactly the one you’ve highlighted with the mention of Greece.
Honourable Greeks, fighting against a foreign invader in the only way possible (forming up in uniformed units would have been suicidal) were executed by their captors, who were never held liable. Does anything strike you as unsatisfactory about that?
What if, in some hypothetical invasion of Australia, Australian partisans, not in uniform, were captured by the enemy. Perfectly OK to execute them?
The franc-tireur law is 19th century. The world’s moved on. Bush was perfectly right in the treatment of prisoners.
[Just to be clear, I'm not equating Greek partisans with Taliban or al-Qaeda scum, but the same legal principles should apply.]
Piett
10 Feb 13 at 9:49 pm
“Yes. Far better to allow your own citizens to die rather than hurt the enemy.”
Jupes,
in all due respect, no doubt if you were being tortured you’d be screaming for your human rights, which would be perfectly justified.
candy
10 Feb 13 at 9:54 pm
Why would anyone want to shoot David Hicks anyway?
That’s just bizarre.
Grey
10 Feb 13 at 10:22 pm
international law applies equally. the purpose of shooting those captured out of uniform is to ensure that the other side cannot hide among civilians.
this rule thus makes occupying troops less trigger happy around civilians because there are fewer franc-tireur
Jim Rose
11 Feb 13 at 6:44 am
History is conditional on two criteria: The individual or organisation presenting it, and the method by which it is presented.
Example: One of the first books I read off my father’s shelf was Reach For The Sky, the biography of Douglas Bader by Australian Paul Brickhill. In it, Bader is described as a man of indomitable spirit and great personal courage in overcoming the loss of his legs in a pre-war flying accident yet returning to active duty during the Battle of Britain. Real ‘Boy’s Own’ stuff and set the benchmark for the ‘stiff upper lip’, ‘press on’ type of fighter pilot. Admirable. However in later years, contemoraries of Bader from other Groups and Squadrons released their wartime memoirs and in them Bader is painted in an entirely different light; arrogant, insufferable, bullying, undermining higher authority and a know-it-all pain in the arse who did Fighter Command a big favour by being shot down in 1941 (or collided, accounts vary) thereafter becoming a pain in the arse for the Germans for the rest of WW2.
My point is; I took what I had initially read as gospel until differing accounts appeared much later, written by men of proven integrity who were THERE, in the battle which cast real doubt about earlier accounts taken at face value. This is just one example, my groaning bookcases have many many more.
Popular Front
11 Feb 13 at 9:36 am
Because it’s war and he was an enemy in the field and a traitor.
JamesK
11 Feb 13 at 10:32 am
Really? Kindly direct me to the declaration of war issued by Australia?
To be a traitor you have to actually commit some act that is actually traitorous. What precisely?
Come on, all we were doing is doing what we always do – brown-nosing the Americans.
David Hicks just wanted to play mercenaries – not a particularly awe-inspiring choice, but hardly traitorous – and then found the place he had chosen to play mercenaries had US special forces and cruise missiles raining down on it. The only country that had some sort of claim against him was India.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 10:40 am
international law applies equally. the purpose of shooting those captured out of uniform is to ensure that the other side cannot hide among civilians.
this rule thus makes occupying troops less trigger happy around civilians because there are fewer franc-tireur
Yes, I realise that, Jim. But are you OK with the downside of that? Partisans, no matter how noble their cause, have no protection whatsoever. The communists or fascists they are fighting against can execute partisans without any fear of repercussions after the war is over.
I would argue against that. There is no need for the automatic shooting of those captured out of uniform. Successful CO-IN campaigns, such as the Malayan Emergency, were fought without such a harsh policy.
Piett
11 Feb 13 at 11:11 am
Anyway you are allowed to be captured out of uniform, you just aren’t allowed to be captured in active service out of uniform.
David Hicks wasn’t capture in active service.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 11:19 am
I could be wrong on this, but wasn’t Hicks guarding a disabled AFV when he was captured?
That’s active service.
Winston SMITH
11 Feb 13 at 12:22 pm
You are.
And even if you weren’t, it would make any difference. But even my patience with arguing with the mentally ill eventually wanes.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 1:13 pm
LOL.
David Hicks – hero to the left.
They especially like the fact that he enjoyed shooting at black people.
C.L.
11 Feb 13 at 1:21 pm
Sure he was a prat – but if we sent every prat to Guantanamo who would be left to comment at Catallaxy.
Grey
11 Feb 13 at 1:33 pm
Plenty I would suggest Grey – but probably not you!
Old Fridgie
11 Feb 13 at 1:38 pm
the purpose of international humanitarian law is to protect civilians from harm. in return for its protections, they must not participate in combat.
Jim Rose
11 Feb 13 at 5:13 pm
Dot, As to the efforts of the Allies to hold war crimes trials in the 1920s, if only the Anzacs had marched on to take Constantinople.
As the occupying power, those war crimes trials would have been held as promised. They would have set an excellent precedent for world war two.
Imagine, the Anzacs at the very founding the great ideal of trying war criminals and punishing genocide. Would that be worth fighting for?
Jim Rose
11 Feb 13 at 5:18 pm
Is that what you call people who make statements about Jews like Daewood did? A prat?
Sounds like you endorse his views.
Token
11 Feb 13 at 5:27 pm
see http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/12-04-45.asp for Lord shawcross at the Nuremberg Trials listing the countless treaties that Germany signed outlawing aggressive war as a crime.
the Nuremberg Trials were not victors’ justice.
Jim Rose
11 Feb 13 at 7:33 pm
Spielberg’s tale of the constitutional amendment to end slavery shrouds Abraham Lincoln’s legacy in myth. The Civil War is the ultimate ”just” war. It was fought to end the vile institution of slavery.
I haven’t seen it yet but I saw the trailer. there’s a byte where Sally Field, as Mary Todd Lincoln is telling Daniel Day Lewis about this one chance for freedom and justice and all the rest of it… There’s also a young black Union soldier who features large. I have my most sincere doubts that the film features Lincoln’s scheme to export black Americans to far colonies. I doubt also that it would show such comments as the one that declared Booker T Washington’s White House visit had so “saturated [the House] with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable” was perfectly polite in Lincoln’s circle.
Sir, how many Victorians would have had a TV?
It’s not so irrelevant. Part of the problem in getting people to understand history these days is that world is so different. It used to be historical pedagogy started in the remote past and worked its way forward. Perhaps it’s an idea to start in the recent past and work our way back. We could, for example, start with the question of car ownership, go back to the early 20th century and highlight the fact that cars were a luxury item at the time. And then impart the biography of an individual who’s life illustrates the massive change and the role of that individual in changing it.
It also helps that that individual was, by today’s standard, culturally backward.
I don’t know if torture was necessary or not
When this question was first raised I was shocked. Sadly now I can’t even compose a response except insofar top ask what is this Civilization we’re supposed to be willing to fight for? On what basis can we be said to be better. And when the next big war happens and our soldiers are treated to barbarity on what moral basis are we going to protest?
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 1:26 pm
Sadly now I can’t even compose a response…
But Benjamin Franklin can:
- 8th February 1780
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 2:02 pm
On the basis that we put the lives of our citizens above the welfare of those that would kill them. In the ticking bomb scenario, would you prefer a pain free terrorist or dead Australians?
You mean like the Japs treated Australian POWs in WW2? There’s no point protesting mate. Nothing but victory will stop it.
jupes
13 Feb 13 at 2:12 pm
In the ticking bomb scenario, would you prefer a pain free terrorist or dead Australians?
The ticking bombs scenario is hypothetical and obvious. The reality is barbaric.
There’s no point protesting mate.
Okay. Shall we, um, bring back witch burning too?
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 5:51 pm
Either you believe that terrorist pain is worse than Australian lives or you don’t. I don’t.
WTF? If you don’t have anything intelligent to say it is probably better to not say anything.
It appears that you are more concerned with having the high moral ground (as you see it), than you are about Australian troops being tortured.
In the example I gave, the Japanese didn’t torture Australian troops because we tortured theirs first. Barbarism was their SOP. The only way to stop them was to defeat them.
While I don’t advocate torture as a routine practice, if in the next war information is required to either defeat the enemy or save Australian lives, I have no problem with doing whatever is necessary to gain that information.
jupes
13 Feb 13 at 6:39 pm
Either you believe that terrorist pain is worse than Australian lives or you don’t. I don’t.
Good for you. If you can find any evidence that Australian lives have been saved because of torture than I’m all ears.
It appears that you are more concerned with having the high moral ground (as you see it), than you are about Australian troops being tortured.
Sucks to the high moral ground. I haven’t anywhere advocated anyone being tortured.
In the example I gave, the Japanese didn’t torture Australian troops because we tortured theirs first. Barbarism was their SOP.
Thanks I got it the first time. And you are quite correct.
The only way to stop them was to defeat them.
For what? To advance civilization to the point where we repeat their barbarity?
While I don’t advocate torture as a routine practice,
It is a routine practice now.
What is disturbing is that it never even occurs to you to consider the possibility that the reintroduction of torture might be, well, not so good. I had realized by a certain age that the ideals of culture were not entirely confirmed by the practices of my country or of those countries allied to me. That leaders often lie by enunciating some Sacred Virtue and then proceeding to act in direct contradiction to it. But I had assumed such as the writ of Habeas Corpus and the relegation of torture to the past were reasonably safe. I see they aren’t.
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 7:06 pm
Pardon me for being a barbarian, but isn’t part of the moral problem with torture that it can leave lasting physical disability and pain?
The entire reason they use waterboarding is that it doesn’t do that. Entirely different to say, cutting someone’s toes off with a pair of bolt cutters.
It is just an advanced method of scaring someone. I think “enhanced interrogation” is indeed a more accurate term than torture. And, indeed, that is why waterboarding is still allowed, because it isn’t torture.
Obviously though, some of the same problems with torture still apply, not least of which is the reliability of information you get from it.
Yobbo
13 Feb 13 at 7:16 pm
Way to avoid the point. But in response to your point, I never claimed there was.
No shit.
No. We (the allies) defeated the Japanese to stop their military aggression and barbarism. I don’t suggest we act as the Japanese did, far from it. Again: if in the next war information is required to either defeat the enemy or save Australian lives, I have no problem with doing whatever is necessary to gain that information. That is a far cry from advocating we work prisoners to death or beat them to death if they don’t work.
Really? In Australia? Do tell. If you are referring to waterboarding, which is hardly ‘barbaric’, then the US only used it three times. Hardly routine practice.
What the hell has the writ of Habeas Corpus got to do with war?
jupes
13 Feb 13 at 7:35 pm
I think “enhanced interrogation” is indeed a more accurate term than torture.
Yes I remember hearing that phrase for the first time courtesy of some CIA dude on a talkback show. Waterboarding does not cause permanent physical injury or pain. Neither does, say, sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is another of the torturer’s favourite things. Please consider, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith’s ordeal in the Ministry of Love begins with sleep deprivation. At the end, physically, he’s all fixed up.
Permanent physical injury is one of the problems with torture, there are many others. Little is known of procedures in Guantánamo. Less in known about procedures in other such places, but enough gets out to let us know they are there.
So we have an unaccountable government agency operating torture centers all over the world all on the basis of a war declared on a concept and without any accountability or oversite. Even tho’ no nation can reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare?
Torture passes with little comment and less horror. In fact question the practice and you are accused of being treacherous! And what is it you people say you believe again?
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 7:45 pm
I don’t think sleep deprivation is torture either FWIW.
I mean, by that definition “being mean” is torture. There’s got to be more to it than that.
This is where we depart from meaningful discussion. Concepts don’t shoot back.
Yobbo
13 Feb 13 at 7:49 pm
Wow. Does that mean you would give a terrorist a good nights sleep rather than keep him up to get information out of him?
Would you also tuck him in and give him a glass of warm milk?
jupes
13 Feb 13 at 8:00 pm
Ah Jupes me ol’ China:
You said:
Either you believe that terrorist pain is worse than Australian lives or you don’t.
I took this to mean that torture is necessary to save Australian lives. Then you tell me I’m evading a point? Okay. What point? I must’ve misunderstood.
No. We (the allies) defeated the Japanese to stop their military aggression and barbarism.
Well the post was about history. And yours is a little shall we say reductive. The cause of the Pacific War is more abstruse than that. It had more to do with the control of the Pacific Ocean and the establishment of hegemony, control of trade. Japanese military aggression had pretty much the same raison d’etre as British aggression in the Atlantic two centuries before.
I’m not sure Japanese barbarism was of much concern to us until we became victims of it.
Really? In Australia?
Noooo.
If you are referring to waterboarding, which is hardly ‘barbaric’, then the US only used it three times.
It is barbaric. What basis is there for that factoid?
What the hell has the writ of Habeas Corpus got to do with war?
Sigh…
Seeing as how Lincoln is also the subject of this post and you are obviously not too well informed on the matters here being discussed, please to the following:
On May 25, federal troops arrested John Merryman in Cockeysville, Maryland, for recruiting, training, and leading a drill company for Confederate service. Merryman’s lawyer promptly petitioned Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, sitting as a trial judge, for a writ of habeas corpus. This writ, sometimes called the Great Writ, is a judicial writ addressed to a jailer ordering him to come to court with his prisoner and explain why the prisoner is being held.
Please move from their to the legal memoranda drafted by John Yoo whilst at Justice and come back.
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 8:01 pm
Um ‘there’.
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 8:03 pm
Would you also tuck him in and give him a glass of warm milk?
Jupes acquire a more serious mindset please. You aren’t even worth a well phrased insult.
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 8:13 pm
You did. I never stated that Australian lives HAD been saved by torture. I asked you about the ticking bomb scenario. A question you evaded.
Wow. The British Empire which spread its system of government and law throughout the world and on which our society is based is morally equivalant to Imperial Japan. Who knew?
Well we could argue the meaning of words, but let me just ask, would you rather be waterboarded or have your balls crushed in a vice?
jupes
13 Feb 13 at 8:18 pm
Yobbo – This is where we depart from meaningful discussion.
No we depart from meaningful discussion over the definition of the word ‘torture’. It’s Larvatus Prodeo territory where argument digresses into semantics. The Oxford Dictionary defines the word as the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something. I regard water boarding and sleep deprivation as torture, you don’t so I’ll drop it only to reaffirm my conviction.
Concepts don’t shoot back.
No and yet there’s War on Terror. And the absence of due process, clear distinctions between warfare and criminal activity and even more hazy lines dividing the powers all make for dangerous business. Try Jack Goldsmith’s view:
Now the guy’s hardly wet and he’s not even substantially averse to CIA methods of advanced interrogation. But he has worries. These quandaries are significant and yet he was one of those lone voices for so long. This is my quandary. There seems to be very little left of the ethical fiber of the Enlightenment.
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 8:27 pm
I asked you about the ticking bomb scenario. A question you evaded.
I didn’t evade it so much as ignore it. It’s spurious. If torture is the only way to get information about the location of a ticking time bomb it will be used. And should be. But when it’s used it would be of great disquiet if there was no soul searching afterward.
But the reintroduction of torture as a standard practice is not the ticking time bomb scenario. 9/11 was a ticking time bomb and the US government had plenty of information. What they didn’t do was act. And instead of getting nailed for their inaction they were given permission to extend their power beyond constitutional bounds in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.
Wow. The British Empire which spread its system of government and law throughout the world and on which our society is based is morally equivalant to Imperial Japan.
I made no comparisons of British law and the Japanese system before 1945. I merely said that the motivation for their aggression was the same. And that the forces underlying the Pacific War had to do with control of that region. For the record I’m happy that it was the British that conquered the world, but then, being of the English-speaking world I would be wouldn’t I?
Well we could argue the meaning of words
Let’s not. On what basis do you assert that the CIA has only ever used waterboarding thrice? How can you know that?
would you rather be waterboarded or have your balls crushed in a vice?
Waterboarded. I’d also rather be deprived of sleep than put on the rack. I’d rather be crucified Roman style than flayed alive and nailed to the city wall like the Assyrians used to do, I’d rather be flogged a hundred times with the cat o’ nine tails than boiled in oil, I’d rather go out the way Charles the First did than suffer the fate of Edward the Second and so forth…
But all of the above are, from where I stand, barbaric.
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 8:43 pm
So you do agree with torture. Good. What’s with all the hand wringing then?
LOL.
Yes, who could have imagined keeping people awake could actually be regarded as torture? Let’s all search our souls.
Well you do seem the
hand wringingsoul searching type.Correction. Only three terrorists were waterboarded by the US. That is the claim made by the CIA and I’ve seen no evidence to rebut it.
That you consider sleep deprivation and water boarding in the same category as the cases of actual torture mentioned is astonishing.
jupes
13 Feb 13 at 9:28 pm
LOL.
You’re obviously a person of sound ethics Jupes. I hope you aren’t left alone with children or other vulnerable persons.
Yes, who could have imagined keeping people awake could actually be regarded as torture?
Menachem Begin
On being tortured by Soviet Authorities.
Let’s all search our souls.
Methinks perhaps you have nothing to search.
Adrien
15 Feb 13 at 5:46 pm
That you consider sleep deprivation and water boarding in the same category as the cases of actual torture mentioned is astonishing.
Of course not, that’s why they often use it to extract information. The water boarding is just to clean the lungs out because water does enter the lungs. And sleep deprivation is just because they want to help their captives learn to stay awake for late night TV. It’s really charity, helping their prisoners to stay fit and healthy.
John H.
15 Feb 13 at 5:51 pm