Stop - You Guys Are Killing Us

In response to a New York Times article on whether or not those in the Bush administration responsible for torture should be pardoned, a commenter named Randy F. offered this suggestion:

“how about we give them medals for making hard decisions during a time of war – we were attacked, remember?”

What Randy F. may be forgetting is that we were attacked at Bunker Hill in 1775, at Fort Sumter in 1861, and Pearl Harbor in 1941. Yet neither General Washington nor President Lincoln nor Franklin Roosevelt suggested that we sanction torture because “we were attacked.”

In fact, our enemies, the British, burned Washington DC to the ground in 1814, and the Soviet Union threatened to annihilate us with nuclear weapons during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, yet none of these existential threats to our nation led us to play the “We were attacked, so let's authorize torture” card.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few Americans who agree with Randy F., claiming either that what our government did was not torture, or that torture under the circumstances was justified. Vice President Cheney, during a Fox News interview, argued that, “We did exactly what needed to be done in order to catch those who were guilty on 9/11 and prevent a further attack,” adding, “We were successful on both parts.” He characterized the recently released report on CIA torture as “full of crap.”

Why are people like Cheney ready to throw out normal standards of decency in the face of threats far less ominous than many we have faced in the past? Is it unprecedented fear or self-serving arrogance that has brought about this new American attitude?

It is true that we were the only major power of World War II that did not suffer horrendous destruction from enemy bombing of civilian targets, so perhaps we have been singularly naïve in a way that has heightened our reactions. The shock of seeing thousands of civilians killed in terrorist attacks in the heart of two of our major cities made us suddenly mindful of our vulnerability. Perhaps Britons, Germans or Japanese would have been less shocked at such tragic losses, given their memories of World War II.

But would any American leaders have sanctioned torture in 2001, or is there something about people like Cheney that made them more likely to do so? It is true that the former Vice sometimes exhibits an attitude of,“If this doesn’t affect someone I know, then it’s not my problem.”

For example, though he is harshly conservative on almost every issue, he took a stand in favor of gay rights when faced with his daughter’s lesbianism. Republican Senator Rob Portman underwent an identical adjustment in attitude. In 2013 he suddenly declared his support for gay marriage, attributing this change to his son coming out as gay.

Similarly, John McCain, the one Republican forcefully speaking out against torture, is famous for having endured torture in Hanoi. Would he be more like Cheney and other fellow Republicans on this issue if he himself had not been brutalized during his captivity? In any case, I salute McCain for his outspoken and eloquent denunciation of torture on the Senate floor.

Whatever it was that made some of our leaders give thumbs up to torture, I hope the release of this report helps return us to our old way of thinking, the way of Washington, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy. We were unquestionably a better country when our leaders considered it profoundly immoral to waterboard, to rectally hydrate, to torture to death through hypothermia, and so on.

And what to do about our shameful past on this issue? Honestly, I have no hope for Dick Cheney, but I would be mightily impressed if George W. Bush were to step forward, admit that we engaged in these grossly immoral acts, and apologize for them.

Outrages on Personal Dignity

Kathryn Bigelow, the director of Zero Dark Thirty, wrote the following: “I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work. Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn't mean it was the key to finding Bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we couldn't ignore.”

Bigelow is no fan of torture and, in fact, as her Los Angeles Times essay makes clear, she is fundamentally opposed to it.  But did her film inadvertently help promote it?  Popular movies do have their effects on the public imagination.  Witness the way in which Gone with the Wind promoted a heart-warming view of plantation slavery and Juno made teen pregnancy seem cool.

Steve Croll, in a terrific piece on Zero Dark Thirty in the New York Review of Books points out that Americans have grown more comfortable with torture in recent years.  Stanford scholar Amy Zegart attributes this change in attitudes, in part, “to the influence of ‘spy-themed entertainment.’”

Zegart is referring to shows like the TV series 24 in which torture is portrayed as vitally important in saving America from catastrophic terrorist attacks.  But torture is not crucial to our well-being, and shame on the 24 writers for making it seem so.

Croll goes on to argue that Zero Dark Thirty is problematic because it may influence the public debate about torture by virtue of its “distorted contribution.”

I think Croll is correct.  Though I have to admire Zero Dark Thirty as a work of dramatic art, I believe it will all too likely help fix the idea in American public opinion that torture was useful and justified in the hunt for Bin Laden, when its usefulness is clearly debatable and its justification even more so.

Even if torture was helpful in finding bin Laden (and remember, a number of knowledgeable insiders say it was not) we should not, in my opinion, resort to it.  Better that the scruffy, bearded 9-11 mastermind had lived to a ripe old age watching video porn in his dank Abbottabad hideout than that our country should besmirch itself with waterboarding and the beating of helpless captives.

Let’s just say that we have faced more dangerous forces in our past than anything presented by today’s Al Qaeda-type religious fanatics.  Abraham Lincoln dealt with the greatest threat our nation has ever encountered and yet he did not feel it necessary to torture Confederates in order to preserve the union and end slavery.  Nor did Eisenhower tell his underlings to torture captured German soldiers in order to defeat Hitler.  If these threats to our nation were met without sanctioned torture, why should it be so damn essential to us in our fight against nutcase losers like Osama bin Laden?

Some people (former Vice President Dick Cheney, for example) claim that torture is as American as Honey Boo Boo and just as lovable.  Of course, the kinds of beatings, waterboardings, confinement to coffin-like boxes, being stripped naked and hung from the ceiling by one’s wrists for hours at a time portrayed in Ms. Bigelow’s film are not, Mr. Cheney insists, torture.  They are, to use CIA parlance, merely “enhanced interrogation techniques.” 

I wonder if Mr. Cheney ever pictures himself or his loved ones being interrogated in such an enhanced manner.  My guess is no, the only ones he imagines will ever be subject to such techniques are people who he thinks deserve it: terrorist suspects, Iranians, Palestinians and Democrats.

There are, we should note, prominent officials in the U. S. government who are vehemently opposed to torture and they have made their objections known to Cheney and company.  Most notable of these are Senators John McCain (himself a victim of torture) and Dianne Feinstein.

The Geneva Conventions prohibit combatants (or anyone else) from inflicting “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”  So I have a question for Mr. Cheney and others of the Bush administration who seem so enthusiastic about using their “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  When you all advocate waterboarding captives, the placing of them in narrow boxes for extended periods, etc., do you tell yourselves that you are not doing anything that could be considered “humiliating and degrading?” I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you need to face facts: to normal Americans your very existence is both humiliating and degrading.

OK, I’m not really sorry to be the one to tell you that.

Even if torture does work, decent people should oppose it and so should Dick Cheney.  And, though I congratulate Ms. Bigelow for having made a compelling film, I object to her film’s implication about the usefulness of torture and am concerned that it will strengthen the hand of those who want it to become a permanent part of “the American way.”