Sleepycatz

Why We Torture

Press Secretary Perino: “But the legal opinion of the United States is that we do not torture. The statutes have been interpreted, the committees have been briefed. And I believe that the members that have been briefed are satisfied that the policy of the United States, and the practices, do not constitute torture.”

That the American government has been involved in torture for the last fifty years should come as no surprise to scholars and observers of its foreign policy. America’s techniques were honed in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, and El Salvador. But what was once done as consultations with foreign security services in the past, has now become overtly practiced by the American government.

When President Bush insists that “We do not torture” it is always with a wink and a nudge to foreign interests and the American people. Historically, governments never admit that that torture prisoners. They will couch their language in professional euphemisms: “enhanced interrogations”, “harsh questioning,” “psychological treatment,” “re-education” are all terms used in the past by governments which tortured prisoners, but denied that they tortured. Even the classification of ‘prisoner’ becomes euphemised: in the Soviet Union prisoners became “patients,” or “dissidents,” in Latin America they were “suspects” or “rebels,” in China “counter-revolutionaries,” and here, in America, they are “detainees” or “enemy combatants”. But this re-defining of language, this euphemization, was never intended to completely hide the fact that all of these governments engaged in in torture. Rather, the language is designed to provide both the highest levels of deniability and justification of tortures use.

As former CIA officer Robert Baer has stated, torture is not an effective or accurate means of acquiring intelligence information. In fact there are well known methods of interrogation which have proven accurate, and which do not involve physical or psychological violence. Around the world, torture is is publicly denounced and decried as inhuman, barbarous, and cruel. So why is torture employed? Partially because it is so publicly reviled. Employing torture signifies a state’s determination and its willingness to protect its interests. For those people who strongly support the state, the act of torture tends embolden their support. For this group, torture — through a state proxy — signifies strength, resolve, and feeds a cathartic need for violent retribution against those they perceive as enemies of the state they support. Torture allows the state transmits the message that it has the ultimate authority over life, death, pain, and comfort. Because of this torture can never be completely hidden. The state must make sure that its ‘enemies’ are aware of its actions. But the state must also maintain the ability to plausibly deny that it utilizes torture. Historically, states have found it nearly impossible to achieve this balance. For years, it was considered monstrously humorous that the Soviets or the Cubans would deny that they tortured prisoners. Today that same sarcastic view is held of America.

Governments which employ torture always claim they need to do so to save the nation from its enemies. But there is no evidence to support this. There is no record of a nation falling because it failed to torture its prisoners. But there is ample evidence to suggest that torture generates fear, which engenders hatred, and which leads to violence against the nation and its people. As President Bush and his supporters have decided that America is to be a torturing nation, they should consider that the terror they try to engender today may be visited upon them tomorrow. They should reflect on the fact that by taking up the banner of torture they have equated America with those nations whose citizens fled to America to escape the horrors of their own torturers. They should remember that history and law always condemns the brutality and horror of torture and those who supported and employed it.

This entry was posted by steve on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Injustices, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.