Torture For Dummies

Okay, boys and girls, today we are going to talk about "torture".  What it is, what it isn't, and why the fact that we use it against our enemies should make all Americans want to crawl out of their skin with disgust.  For those conservative right-wing morons in my readership, you may want to skip the next few paragraphs.  My liberal ravings can cause: (but are not limited to) headache, nausea, hypertension, loose stools, coughing, wheezing, runny-nose, heart palpitations, kidney stones, insomnia, impotence and decreased feelings of self-worth.  Consider yourself warned, O Party of Lincoln.

Americans have an extremely difficult time with gray areas.  We do black and white morality very well, ie, Christians = Good, Muslims = Bad (see our current administration for details) but when it comes down to seeing the middle ground, we really kind of suck.  Ask yourself the following question:  If I was the President, and I had a terrorist in custody, and that terrorist knew the location of a bomb that threatened the lives of hundreds or thousands of innocent Americans, would I torture that terrorist to get the information I needed to save lives?

In that highly inflammatory scenario, I imagine most peoples' answer would be "yes, of course".  Most people seem to have a flexible definition of morality…we'll sing off the Democratic, Let-Freedom-Ring song sheet as long as it's expedient, but put us in a situation where hard decisions have to be made and we fall back on that old adage 'the ends justify the means'…or to whit, in extreme situations, extreme measures have to be taken.  Personally, I think this is a load of self-satisfying hooey.  There are plenty of situations where lives take a backseat to Political Idealism™ -- abortion, the death penalty, hostage situations, genocide in countries that lack a significant American interest…the list goes on.  I believe this is known as collateral damage.  In any case, it's hypocrisy – the same people in our government who are Pro-Torture are also Pro-Life and probably Pro-Death-Penalty to boot…call me if you manage to untangle that particular logic puzzle, because I can't.  

In any case, the hypocrisy of the pro-torture stance isn't really the point of this particular blog.  My POINT, dear readers, is that the above scenario, known as the "ticking bomb" scenario, is a bunch of made-for-TV bullshit.  I actually took the question from the plot of a recent episode of Commander In Chief.  TV isn't real life, though it tries very hard to imitate it.  The problem is, real life is usually pretty boring and mundane, and I find it very hard to believe that every detainee in Abu Ghraib or Guantanimo Bay has life-or-death knowledge of an imminent threat to American lives.  In any case, the real question isn't whether you can justify the use of torture in an extreme case…it's whether you can justify using torture in everyday interrogations.

What's a little disturbing is this:  we're not supposed to use cruel, inhuman or degrading methods of interrogation on detainees.  It's forbidden by our Constitution, and backed up by a 1994 UN Convention Against Torture.  Good for us, we're against forcing detainees to urinate on each other, desecrate the Koran or dance around in naked pig-piles with electrodes on their ding-dongs.  God Bless America.  So what's the problem?  Well, according to our current administration, the Constitution doesn't apply outside the United States, so any Constitutional protections against torture A) don't apply as long as it's off US soil, and B) don't apply as long as we're torturing foreign nationals and not American citizens.  Okay well, check this out:  August 6 PDB.  This is the declassified Presidential Daily Brief from August 2001, which says that some members of Al Qaida are American citizens.  So how long before our illustrious government decides to throw the second prohibition out the window and start torturing Americans?  Imagine how much easier Law Enforcement types would have it without those pesky 5th amendment rights getting in the way of suspect interrogation…we could break the mafia, we could break pedophile rings, we could torture crack dealers to get information on drug cartels…forget that none of the resultant information would be admissible in court.  Times change.

The point is that you're never going to catch all the bad guys.  What our courts have accepted with Miranda and other Constitutional protections like the Presumption of Innocence and Burden of Proof is a certain measure of risk – risk that occasionally a really bad guy is going to slip through the net, and occasionally criminals may go unpunished.  This risk is balanced against protections for our citizens who may be innocent of the crimes they're accused of – we accept that sometimes the Justice system may fail, that sometimes we have to err on the side of the Defendant, that sometimes we'll be wrong.  We need to extend this same balance to our dealings internationally – when we detain someone, we'd better have evidence against them.  When we interrogate them, we should use the same standards we use in the American legal system.  When we bring them to trial, we should operate under the same rules that govern courts here in the States.  Occasionally a bad guy will slip through the net.  Occasionally we'll be wrong.  But we'll also have the moral high ground, we'll also be what we want to be in the eyes of the rest of the world – we'll never have to go before the UN and explain our legacy of abuse, we will be seen as a country that respects human rights, a nation of idealists rather than a nation of hypocrites.  

And by the way, that whole "well they tortured us first!" argument went out in the 3rd grade.  So they cut off heads on national television – if Osama Bin Ladin jumped off a cliff, would you?  Saddam Hussein also used chemical weapons on his own people – we going to try that one next?  Two wrongs don't make a right, people.  Somebody must've missed the Golden Rule day in Bible Class.  

Hypocrisy is a bitch.

Until next time…