So the subject of torture has come up again. Not so much the fact that is up but it is alleged that we as a country are engaging in it. This is a subject that I feel has very clear boundaries, yet somehow it is still wrestled and debated back and forth as if we have all the time in the world to resolve it. Being someone who is concerned about why we would need to even consider it I pay attention when this debate comes up. I have a decent ability to see the other side of most arguments and I have listened respectfully to the other side of this for what I have determined to be long enough.
The other sides' argument goes something like "We need to be able to use whatever we need to in order to get the information to make this country safe and protect our citizens from attack." Fine. I too watch "24" and revel in the fantasy of having a person to take out the fear and anger on in an effort to save the U.S.A. I also realize where the line between fantasy and reality is. I can see clearly where right and wrong reside and it is not a thin line that separates the two. And it is here where the argument has a blow out, springs a leak, and has its transmission fall out.
The key is the information that you get from the use of torture and the quality of it. Torture will always yield results, but not accurate ones. When someone is having pain inflicted upon them by another human being it does two things. One it make the recipient desperate to make it stop, so desperate that they become willing to say whatever they THINK will make the pain stop. Ask John McCain. The man is an expert on, not the theory of torture, but what it actually does. Two it has an altering effect on the person inflicting it, and not in the positive.
For the same reason that we watch closely the kids that torture and kill animals we should be watching the people who carry out torture in the name of protecting freedom and spreading democracy.
The only problem is that we don't and will never know who is doing the torture, because if we know that the terrorists win apparently. We will also never know who is being tortured and for how long they have been tortured. What do you do with someone who has been tortured for information by the state? They are obviously a liability aren't they? If they did not completely hate us before, they certainly do now. So we send them to prison. Keep them locked up because they are dissenters, insurgents, and terrorists. But for how long?
Do we have the right to take away the entire lives of people based on a suspicion of what we think that they might think?
Or do we take the lazy/easy way out and eliminate them? After they have proved no more use to us we just take them some where and disappear them. It certainly solves the issue of funding doesn't it.
Can we honestly carry out torture and expect the "favor" not to be returned to us upon our soldiers and citizens abroad? Do we really think that the people we torture can just disappear without a trace or repercussion in the future? Do we really think that a policy of torture will not forever change the attitude of this country and its leadership? Are we honestly as ignorant on history as we seem?
I was intentionally vague on the details above because it is all too easy to equate what we are doing now with known historical fact. Stalin and Mao had prisons, some secret and some not, where people were sent because of how they thought. Some were tortured before they got there and some were not. The SS death squads, the Khymer Rouge, the Chilean disappearance crews, and the KGB were all documented to have gotten worse and more brutal as time went on. The British learned that some day you had to release dissidents and they would forever hate you for what you did to them and what you took from them. They also learned that they would do everything in their power to strike back. What you give them by torturing them and endlessly imprisoning them is drive and motivation. The Chileans were astute observers of history and decided to just make dissenters go away forever. Was peace, freedom, or democracy EVER spread through the means of torture at any time throughout human history? If anyone can answer yes to that please let me know.
Torture gets carried out by the weak upon those they perceive can be lorded over without consequence. An especially recent example would be Saddam Hussein. He applied the torture and death squads model liberally. By the standards we are operating under now the Hussein regime must have been the most free democracy ever.
I never thought that my country or my government would be able to be equated with some of the most vile characters and institutions in history. Yet, amazingly we are not just approaching it, we are here. We are talking about the Geneva Conventions being "quaint" and retroactive immunity for the ones who allowed this to go forward and carried it out with malice and maybe a little bit of glee.
So the real question becomes, how does a nation take a step back in its own eyes and the eyes of an astute world? How do you solve problems that you created in your arrogant and egotistical ideological crusade?
You remove the offenders from power. You take the power back and give it to its rightful owners-the people. You try and convict the offenders in a way they would not be willing to do for you-with justice and due process.
John Stewart Mill wrote in On Liberty that when the government breaks its contract with the people then the people have a duty to remove the government and install one that will do the people's will. The contract that is The Constitution and The Bill of Rights has been desecrated and broken and we are now at that time. We cannot tolerate any more of the lies, the hatred, the racism, the perversion, and the corruption that this government has perpetrated on this country and on this world. We as a country have been equated to the actions of petty despots and the most brutal regimes of recent memory. It is not just semantics and it must be stopped.