This morning I opened our web browser and the usual news page began scrolling the day’s headlines. I expected the usual montage of he-said-she-said election updates. Instead I got a photograph of activists in baseball caps waterboarding a volunteer.
My immediate reaction was visceral—I felt tricked and betrayed, disgusted, my delicate disposition robbed of the option to look away. It’s been unnerving, these last few years, never knowing if an innocent glance at the news might result in witnessing a beheading, an execution, or torture. I suppose it is a good thing, this bearing collective witness to atrocity. At least we cannot claim ignorance, even if we do not accept collective responsibility.
This morning, I only glimpsed a bit of torture, a drama of torture really. The voluntary nature of the situation seems to make it something different. If a person allows someone to nearly drown him to make a statement, well, that is one thing. Being pinned down by strangers, not knowing when they will stop the flow of water is another thing altogether. Torture is physical certainly, but it is also psychological. It is about power. Torture, if we suppose that it can be effective, is so because people’s wills are broken.
My country breaks people.
It is policy. For those of you who wish to limit this policy, my president has a veto.
My argument against torture is largely based upon a vague sense of repulsion—certainly not the sort of claim that could bear much weight in a serious ethical argument. Practically speaking, I know that torture is largely ineffectual. Experts (is it unsurprising that there are experts in such a thing?) have argued publicly that tortured individuals often tell their captors what they think they want to hear. The end result is a broken suspect, and information, but not necessarily truth.
President Bush argues that we cannot ban acts such as waterboarding because in the past such practices have prevented attacks. Granting this as accurate (which I do hesitantly), and putting aside the logic that says past performance is a predictor for future occurrences, I cannot imagine that torture is so vital to our national security—in fact, it seems counterproductive.
People brutalize one another most easily when they lose sense of one another’s humanity—in war the enemy becomes a caricature, is given a slur instead of a name, and destroyed as a monolith. We call our enemies terrorists both because they create terror, but also because the term reduces their activities to the horrible bloodshed. Various cells have countless claims against American economic and political policy—but conventional wisdom tells us that the claims of monsters ought not be legitimized.
Among the many things I fear, it is being painted with the same brush.
On the scale of things terrible, I am unsure where to place information-seeking torture along side traditional war, bombings, or using mentally handicapped individuals to deliver bombs. All along this spectrum of cruelty, people harm others for a perceived greater good. But “they’ve got their reasons, we’ve got ours” is a weak response. Even the most wicked people have reasons for the things they do. Justifications abound. But brutality has a double vector—it destroys the victim and the brutalizer.
In honesty, my shock this morning was not a sadness for the CIA operatives who will be asked to torture. I may have been a bit ambivalent about the protestors objecting to torture by play-acting waterboarding, but I suppose my greatest misgivings centered upon the veto itself. As a member of a representative democracy, I am, in fact part of something broader, and I submit myself to representation by my officials. This morning, the president acted against my will (nothing much unusual), justified the unjustifiable, but also gave the argument a mark of finality.
The terrorists blow people up. Americans torture—when we have to.
It all comes down to such simple categories—and it tarnishes all of us.
In the last seven years I’ve learned to talk with candor about impossible brutality. I have never experienced any of this violence directly, but through slow but constant inundation, I am learning to see the agony of others differently, with indifference.
I play-act too. I begin writing paragraphs describing my own shock and disgust, but I am mostly angry with the president. I am only passingly unnerved by the image of partial drowning.
The exceptionality of terrorism has almost been lost by many Americans. Torture is becoming something academic, just another seven letter word to be discussed, sussed out. We argue over its definition, and the horror softens to a twinge.
This, then, is why the veto is so alarming. A people can be defined by what it does, but also by what it refuses to accept. When the unthinkable ceases to be taboo, it’s difficult to know what we will not do or approve under the right circumstances.
I recognize the slippery slope here—but looking back, I recognize how far we’ve already slid.
My immediate reaction was visceral—I felt tricked and betrayed, disgusted, my delicate disposition robbed of the option to look away. It’s been unnerving, these last few years, never knowing if an innocent glance at the news might result in witnessing a beheading, an execution, or torture. I suppose it is a good thing, this bearing collective witness to atrocity. At least we cannot claim ignorance, even if we do not accept collective responsibility.
This morning, I only glimpsed a bit of torture, a drama of torture really. The voluntary nature of the situation seems to make it something different. If a person allows someone to nearly drown him to make a statement, well, that is one thing. Being pinned down by strangers, not knowing when they will stop the flow of water is another thing altogether. Torture is physical certainly, but it is also psychological. It is about power. Torture, if we suppose that it can be effective, is so because people’s wills are broken.
My country breaks people.
It is policy. For those of you who wish to limit this policy, my president has a veto.
My argument against torture is largely based upon a vague sense of repulsion—certainly not the sort of claim that could bear much weight in a serious ethical argument. Practically speaking, I know that torture is largely ineffectual. Experts (is it unsurprising that there are experts in such a thing?) have argued publicly that tortured individuals often tell their captors what they think they want to hear. The end result is a broken suspect, and information, but not necessarily truth.
President Bush argues that we cannot ban acts such as waterboarding because in the past such practices have prevented attacks. Granting this as accurate (which I do hesitantly), and putting aside the logic that says past performance is a predictor for future occurrences, I cannot imagine that torture is so vital to our national security—in fact, it seems counterproductive.
People brutalize one another most easily when they lose sense of one another’s humanity—in war the enemy becomes a caricature, is given a slur instead of a name, and destroyed as a monolith. We call our enemies terrorists both because they create terror, but also because the term reduces their activities to the horrible bloodshed. Various cells have countless claims against American economic and political policy—but conventional wisdom tells us that the claims of monsters ought not be legitimized.
Among the many things I fear, it is being painted with the same brush.
On the scale of things terrible, I am unsure where to place information-seeking torture along side traditional war, bombings, or using mentally handicapped individuals to deliver bombs. All along this spectrum of cruelty, people harm others for a perceived greater good. But “they’ve got their reasons, we’ve got ours” is a weak response. Even the most wicked people have reasons for the things they do. Justifications abound. But brutality has a double vector—it destroys the victim and the brutalizer.
In honesty, my shock this morning was not a sadness for the CIA operatives who will be asked to torture. I may have been a bit ambivalent about the protestors objecting to torture by play-acting waterboarding, but I suppose my greatest misgivings centered upon the veto itself. As a member of a representative democracy, I am, in fact part of something broader, and I submit myself to representation by my officials. This morning, the president acted against my will (nothing much unusual), justified the unjustifiable, but also gave the argument a mark of finality.
The terrorists blow people up. Americans torture—when we have to.
It all comes down to such simple categories—and it tarnishes all of us.
In the last seven years I’ve learned to talk with candor about impossible brutality. I have never experienced any of this violence directly, but through slow but constant inundation, I am learning to see the agony of others differently, with indifference.
I play-act too. I begin writing paragraphs describing my own shock and disgust, but I am mostly angry with the president. I am only passingly unnerved by the image of partial drowning.
The exceptionality of terrorism has almost been lost by many Americans. Torture is becoming something academic, just another seven letter word to be discussed, sussed out. We argue over its definition, and the horror softens to a twinge.
This, then, is why the veto is so alarming. A people can be defined by what it does, but also by what it refuses to accept. When the unthinkable ceases to be taboo, it’s difficult to know what we will not do or approve under the right circumstances.
I recognize the slippery slope here—but looking back, I recognize how far we’ve already slid.
