The Evil That Men Do
(Not the kickass Iron Maiden tune.)
I just read a great little piece in AdBusters that described, in a short second-person narrative, what you could do to a prisoner and not be considered a torturer, none of which would leave a physical trace. You could do all of these things and short of killing the guy, any claim that torture took place can be called hearsay, testimony vs testimony, deniable.
There is no doubt in my mind that the activities sanctioned by the US military for interrogation are morally reprehensible, clearly torture, and just plain wrong, but I wouldn’t make those arguments to a proponent of torture. I’m not going to ask them to accept my moral system. I would make an argument of efficacy.
It is widely held in intelligence and law enforcement circles that information acquired through torture is of dubious value. Testimony supplied under duress is easily and believable recanted, making it worthless in a court of law.
At some point, if you are being tortured, notions of truth fly out the window. Because, if it isn’t the truth the torturers are looking for, it won’t do you any good. You just want to say whatever it is that will make the pain stop.
And everybody seems to know this. Yet, torture continues. It seems to me the only way to explain its persistence is that it has nothing to do with the information gained (because we know it to be of little value) and all to do with venting the anger of the captors at their own failure to advance the narrative they are living.
Which is extra especially scary when the people deciding who to torture are so sure of a narrative so misguided that the only way to make it remotely plausible was to lie. How could you possible satisfy such people? How could you possibly tell them what they want to hear? Except to lie?
It is the evil in men, beyond rationality and completely in the service of dark, bloody passion, that allows torture to exist.
I just read a great little piece in AdBusters that described, in a short second-person narrative, what you could do to a prisoner and not be considered a torturer, none of which would leave a physical trace. You could do all of these things and short of killing the guy, any claim that torture took place can be called hearsay, testimony vs testimony, deniable.
There is no doubt in my mind that the activities sanctioned by the US military for interrogation are morally reprehensible, clearly torture, and just plain wrong, but I wouldn’t make those arguments to a proponent of torture. I’m not going to ask them to accept my moral system. I would make an argument of efficacy.
It is widely held in intelligence and law enforcement circles that information acquired through torture is of dubious value. Testimony supplied under duress is easily and believable recanted, making it worthless in a court of law.
At some point, if you are being tortured, notions of truth fly out the window. Because, if it isn’t the truth the torturers are looking for, it won’t do you any good. You just want to say whatever it is that will make the pain stop.
And everybody seems to know this. Yet, torture continues. It seems to me the only way to explain its persistence is that it has nothing to do with the information gained (because we know it to be of little value) and all to do with venting the anger of the captors at their own failure to advance the narrative they are living.
Which is extra especially scary when the people deciding who to torture are so sure of a narrative so misguided that the only way to make it remotely plausible was to lie. How could you possible satisfy such people? How could you possibly tell them what they want to hear? Except to lie?
It is the evil in men, beyond rationality and completely in the service of dark, bloody passion, that allows torture to exist.
posted by JJisafool at 8:11 PM
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