I never really imagined in all of my 49 years on the planet that there would seriously be a debate in the United States about whether it is alright to torture a prisoner. I don't think of myself as naive or unjaded, but it just always seemed pretty clear to me that American political culture would not sanction the overt use of torture as a legitimate means of intelligence gathering or war fighting. I can just imagine what the reaction would have been among Americans if the North Vietnamese had said during the Vietnam War -- "of course we are torturing POWs like John McCain. They are conducting an illegal, undeclared war of aggression on the Vietnamese people, a people that has done them no harm whatsoever; they are using chemical weapons on our citizens, they are indiscriminately dropping massive quantities of ordnance such as cluster bombs in civilian areas -- we need to know everything we can about America's war plans so as to minimize our already horrific civilian casualties." How well do you think that rationale would have gone over with the American people generally and right wingers specifically? Well, of course, the wingers would have frothed at the mouth in rage -- but not it turns out over principle, merely over accidents of birth.
Today the Washington Post features yet another screed by the aggressively stupid, disingenuous, and immoral Marc Thiessen arguing that the torturing (once again using the Orwellian term "enhanced interrogation techniques") of prisoners has been so effective that we cannot possibly give up this weapon in our arsenal. Thiessen asserts self-justifying, unverifiable McCarthyite claims regarding the efficacy of torture. Now I am highly skeptical about this -- nothing written by professionals in the field suggests to me that this is true. (And although markedly different, nothing in my questioning of hundreds of witnesses over the years in legal proceedings leads me to believe that coercive or bullying approaches elicit much useful or truthful information).
But in the end, I think this is not an avenue worthy of argument. I actually don't give a shit if it's effective. It's wrong, barbaric, dehumanizing, and altogether unworthy of how a great people and great nation would act. We don't eschew torture for utilitarian reasons -- we do it based on our deeply held belief in our principles, in the rule of law, the dignity of man, and our shared common humanity. We don't resist the use of torture because it is the easy thing to do or because we are not under threat or not afraid. We resist it because we believe at a core level that some principles are sacrosanct even if we may face risk or even death at the hands of fanatics -- we stand by the essential tenet that we mustn't become monsters in order to defeat a monster.
It sickens me at heart that we even have to engage in this discussion. . .
