"Anyone who fights with monsters should take care that he does not in the process become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Amid the frantic, nonstop media coverage of the
Boston Marathon bombing, another equally horrific news story was, perhaps
predictably, overshadowed. A nonpartisan, independent review commissioned by
the Constitution Project confirmed what many of us had long known: The United
States, in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,
deliberately and knowingly engaged in torture.
The nearly 600-page report concludes the U.S., in
the aftermath of 9/11, “indisputably” engaged in “the practice of torture,” and
that the highest officials within the Bush administration bear responsibility
for it according to The New York Times
(04/16/13). The authors of the report called the widespread use of torture
unprecedented. “[There had never before been] the kind of considered and
detailed discussions… directly involving a president and his top advisors on
the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some
detainees in our custody,” the report states.
The report’s authors find “no justification” for the
use of torture. They add that it “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced
our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased
the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.”
This is certainly not news for most citizens. Most
Americans—whether they approve of such heinous practices or not—at least have
some inkling of the government’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation
techniques.” But the panel’s report should finally put an end to any remaining
debate or uncertainty (most of it generated by the corporate media) that still
surrounds the issue.
Regardless, Americans’ general response to these
findings has been a collective shrug. Perhaps that is due to a general
acceptance (among both conservatives and liberals) of torture as a legitimate
interrogation technique in the “war on terror.”
A poll conducted last fall by Professor Amy Zegart
of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution finds 41 percent of respondents
support the use of torture in questioning designated “enemy combatants”—an
increase of 14 points since 2007. An additional 25 percent believe it is
acceptable to use nuclear weapons to combat terrorists, while a whopping 69
percent favor killing suspected terrorists outright through targeted
assassination programs.
Zegart attributes the steady climb in support for
torture (which, curiously has increased,
rather than decreased during the Obama years) to popular portrayals in shows
like 24 and this year’s Oscar
nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty. I
believe it has more to do with the simplistic dichotomization and overall
dumbing down of our political culture. But pop-culture’s pervasive
glorification of sadistic acts of torture by rugged heroes like Jack Bauer
likely does not help.
Of course, torture’s widespread public acceptance
and support does not change the fact such inhumane treatment is still illegal
under dozens of international laws. While comedian Jon Stewart may disagree,
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other prominent administration
figures, according to the dictates of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention
Against Torture (both of which the U.S. is a signatory to), are guilty of war
crimes and crimes against humanity. They should all be in prison. Yet
immediately after taking office, Barack Obama nixed any notion of criminal
investigations for illegal acts committed by the members of the Bush
administration, preferring to “look forward rather than backward.”
Not only was Obama’s refusal to prosecute Bush and Co.
politically cowardly, legalistically speaking it was downright asinine. Law
enforcement is, by its very nature, predicated on “looking backward” as that is
precisely where the crime has occurred—in the past. Consider the utter
absurdity of Jack Abramoff, Adam Lanza or even Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
pleading to a courtroom, “Your honor, my crimes all occurred in the past. We
need to look forward rather than backward so we can heal as a nation.”
Indeed, without justice, victims can never “move
forward.” In the words of Saint Augustine, “Charity is no substitute for
justice denied.”
Instead of a jail cell, George W. Bush received an
honorary presidential library. As Ralph Nader observes in a recent article (“He
is Comfortable in Bush’s Inferno,” 04/21/2013), the traditional rule of law that
once governed our nation—which clearly lays out a formal process of impeaching
criminal presidents—no longer seems to apply. “The American people have yet to
come to terms with the reality that presidents are above the law,” Nader
writes. “Presidents can commit repeated crimes in an outlaw presidency so long
as they can invoke, however falsely and vaguely, national security.”
Torture is never justified. Never mind its proven
failure to solicit accurate, useful information from its victims. Torture
represents the ultimate debasement of one’s humanity. Those who resort to
torture succumb to the most savage, sinister urges of human nature.
Torture, Chilean author Ariel Dorfman wrote, “presupposes,
it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine others’
suffering, dehumanizing them so much that their pain is not our pain. It
demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of
compassion or empathy, but also demands of everyone else the same distancing,
the same numbness…”
But torture is more than just brute, physical harm.
As Naomi Klein explains in her superb book, The
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism the torturer’s ultimate
goal is to psychically erase the prisoner’s identity and create a new one from
scratch. Psychologist and shock-therapy innovator, Ewen Cameron, sadistically
used electroshock treatment on his patients in an effort to literally wipe
their minds clean—to create a “blank slate” onto which he could start anew.
This is how the totalitarian Party finally “reforms”
Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984.
“We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill
you with ourselves,” O’ Brien tells Winston during the novel’s grim and lengthy
torture sequence. And so they do. By the dystopian novel’s end, the rebel
Winston finally pledges his unwavering loyalty to Big Brother.
“Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain,”
Orwell wrote of Winston’s torture. “In the face of pain there are no heroes, no
heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor…”
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