Tortured Logic

Why torture doesn’t make America a better country

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
1/11/06
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/torturelogic.htm

The trash right, those Americans who seemingly base their moral and ethical values on the Rush Limbaugh Show, are in a snit because people are daring to criticize the lovable Dick Cheney for his jocular remarks about the fun practice of waterboarding.

They tend to break into two factions. There are those who really do think waterboarding is just harmless fun, meant to annoy the victim more than anything, and no more dangerous than bobbing for apples. Sort of like the dunking booth at the state fair, right? If you mention that there are American soldiers on trial for murder because people have died from waterboarding, they tend to get a vague look and want to talk about the baseball standings instead.

The other camp have a pretty good idea how savage the practice is, and don’t give a shit. Waterboarding was big with the Khmer Rouge, which used it to murder thousands in the Tuol Sleng Prison. Waterboarding, lit bamboo sticks under the fingernails, gouging out eyeballs, whatever it takes. The government has told them there are people who want to hurt them, and they are willing to torture anyone who the government says might frighten them, and damn the cost! They don’t want the government to stop until every kneecap in the middle east is broken if that’s what it takes to get those people to recognize our superior morals and courage.

One guy on Usenet did manage to combine the two camps, and posed the question, “Imagine that a loved one of yours was in danger and a prisoner in custody was known to have information crucial to preventing the attack. You'd be more than happy to use techniques as benign as waterboarding to save their lives. Don't insult us by pretending you wouldn't.”

Well, no, I wouldn’t. First, either the guy is part of some grand conspiracy and knows the details or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, all the torture in the world won’t bring out the information. If he does, then he’s probably a committed member of the group presenting the danger, and believes strongly in what he is doing. He knows he’s going to be tortured no matter what. (In the movies, the torturer always magically knows when the victim has finally told the truth. Usually because the dialogue has gotten even worse). If there is little time, he needs to tell only on convincing lie that will last long enough for the “device” to “trigger.” If there is a considerable amount of time, all he need do is tell the truth unconvincingly. (Let’s say the “device” is anthrax on the NY subway. He need only say that NY is laced with “Efrit powder that will make all fall down and witness the glory of Allah.” He includes that with a dozen or so other stories, so that even if he breaks down and tells the exact truth, he won’t be believed.

But I got to thinking about that argument for torture. I’ve referred to it in the past as the “Jack Bauer argument” – the notion that there is imminent danger, and torture is the ONLY way to get the information in time to save the city. It’s a device employed by lazy writers who don’t want their cops to have to go out and force the writer to do actual plotting, and it’s believed by the same sorts of idiots who think western gunslingers were heroes.

That’s why Arthur Conan Doyle, beliefs about faeries notwithstanding, was a great writer and Tom Clancy isn’t: Sherlock Holmes never had to torture anyone to get his information.

But torture appeals to the trash right, who measure their patriotism in terms of how savage they can be. They like to see themselves as cold, remote heroes, misunderstood but endowed with great hidden moral strength.

In reality, they’re just run of the mill cowards and bullies using the flag for dress up.

But the right winger with the “Imagine a loved one” posit got me to thinking about a good counter to that.

Suppose a loved one of your was in imminent danger because terrorists were going to blah the city of blah, killing blah millions. Now, by an incredible stroke of luck, you have captured a terrorist and his son, who is five years old. You somehow magically KNOW the terrorist planted the blah – maybe you have a dog who’s trained to bark when he smells blah powder, and the dog had a fit when the guy walked in the interrogation chamber. Or maybe one of his neighbors who got a bad deal on a car transaction last month turned him in. The latter is how America “captures” most of the “terrorists” in the Gulags – someone rats them off, and the Americans don’t even bother to check to see if the story has any basis or not, because the more people they throw in prison, the more the public thinks they are doing something about terrorism. In any event, you’ve got the terrorist, or a reasonable facsimile. You somehow know that there is a blah, and that the blah is going to go off at midnight in blah city. How you can know all this and not know the exact location of the blah is a question that only Tom Clancy can answer. It’s a pretty unlikely premise to be using to hang a policy of torture on in the first place.

So: you’ve got the terrorist, and you’ve got his five year old son. You know the terrorist has information that can save your city.

Do you take the five year old boy and anally rape him in front of his father in order to extract the information you need from the terrorist?

If you answered no, you just killed millions of your countrymen. How do you feel about that?

If you huffed and said that isn’t the same thing at all, my answer is yes. Yes, it is the same thing.

Morally, there is absolutely no difference between raping a child, and taking a captive human being of any age and torturing him. The two acts are morally equal. Both do immense damage, and dehumanize both the perpetrator and the victim.

If you argue that torture has a rationale whereas child rape does not, you would be wrong there, too. Child molesters, according to the literature, are convinced that they are showing the child love and affection, and sharing something that will benefit the child. If you say that is a stupid and dishonest rationale, I’ll just smile and ask if a country should form a policy of torture based on a scenario that no respectable writer would try to use in a storyline.

The last line of defense the pro-torture sorts usually try is “Well, at least we don’t blow up marketplaces and mosques, and we don’t fly planes into buildings.” That may be true, but anyone who endorses torture has pretty much convinced me that they are capable of such things, and much worse. Child rape for purposes of torture is believed to have been used by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison.

We treat pedophiles – rightly – with scorn. We need to do the same with those who endorse torture.