Apple of Doubt

The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.

–Andrew Sullivan

The newly revealed Inspector Generals Report (pdf) brings to light even more instances of physical and psychological torture of middle eastern terror suspect and deaths that resulted from said torture. These documents, which were unearthed by the efforts of human rights groups and the ACLU, have spurred Obama’s justice department into finally taking some action against these horrendous acts.

First let’s look at what these men are being subjected to. These men are those suspected, not convicted but suspected, of being a terrorist. Are being held without trial and without rights may or not be guilty of anything greater than being the wrong nationality in the wrong place. Some maliciously sold to the U.S. for a bounty. Some culturally forced into service by a fundamentalist community. Of course not all were innocent. These men are locked away in a remote prison uniformed, numbered, and dehumanized like all prisoners. Are then taken by burly soldiers black bagged and thrown into interrogation chambers. Imagine that if you can. Held with no knowledge of when you will be released, or executed, and many times without warning a bag is shoved down over your head and you are put into a cell not knowing what is going to happen.

Imagine that. This next part you don’t need to imagine because it’s been spelled out for you. After you’ve been forcefully stripped naked and stand in a cold cell with a bag over your head and a man enters and a drill begins to whir. He demands information that you may not even have to give him. The drill get’s closer. Every footstep he makes causes you flinch a little, preparing for the inevitable strike. You fear the worst. The drill gets close to your head. You can’t even hear his demands now over the whir of the bit. It never finds purchase though and you shudder a sigh of relief, or maybe you just break down and cry. Then you are dragged back to your cell to wait for it to all start again.

Maybe it’s not a drill next time. Maybe you’ll be beaten to death with a metal flashlight. You wouldn’t be the first. They might just waterboard you. Or choke you into unconsciousness. Be careful, if you are not properly deferential you will get a gun stock to the ribs. One of these foreign soldiers might put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. It’s not loaded, though there was no way you could have known that. Or scrape your skin with a hard brush, slam your head into a wall, hang you in a position that could dislocate your shoulders, freeze you, or any number of things.

If your lucky they won’t touch you. Instead they will lead you into a room, sit you down, and threaten to rape your mother, or sister, or wife right there in front of you. While setting there being pressed for information that you may not even have you might hear screams and gunshots coming from the next interrogation chamber and when you walk out you see another detainee lying there dead, or at least what appears to you like another detainee.

After all this we are told that these professional torturers should be lauded as heroes that keep us safe. Because that’s worked so well every other time that’s been done in history. If you read the descriptions of what was done to these men, guilty or not, and you’re response is to say, as one commenter at politico did,

These animals killed 3000 and we’re worried about a gunshot next door? What a joke.

Then I have to ask whether you have any moral compass whatsoever. I think the phrase “these animals” tells us everything we need to know. It’s an embrace of the worst kind of elitism, that which says it’s acceptable to kill these people, to terrorize them, to mistreat them. Why? Because they are just “these animals”. Not fellow human beings like you or me who are entitled to the same respect and presumption of innocence. If you really believe in equal rights for all humans then those rights must be applied even to these men. If you cherish your own access to due process and fair treatment but want to deny these men those same rights then you don’t believe in human rights. To even attempt to segregate out a segment of the human race as moral inferiors is to invite conundrum.

So what can we say to justify this treatment? You might say that these are criminals and deserve harsh punishment. The first problem is that these men are imprisoned without a trial so their guilt or innocence is often left undetermined. Many confess later on, under torture but there is a reason that such confessions are not accepted in any civilian court in the west. However we have rules to deal with criminals. Foreign nationals who commit crimes and extradited are still treated with the same protections as Americans. Prisoners of war must be treated humanely and justly under well established international laws. These men are classified as “enemy combatants” a recently invented designation that allows them to be treated however the administration chooses despite that the court has ruled that certain articles of the geneva convention do, in fact, apply to these detainees. This is why there is a push to have the rule of law enforced.

What about those that are guilty, not only guilty of waging what they believe to be a war against a foreign occupation but those that orchestrate terroistic tactics, those that bomb, and those that torture and kill? It’s a common thing to hear people say these men have forfeited their rights. But are they any less human? If they are deranged sociopaths then we should lock them up in hospitals and treat them not torture them. If they were then torture would not be the least bit effective as their minds would be significantly different than a normal person.

So let’s assume that these people are legally sane but have done things we find morally repellent and a danger to the livelihood of our citizens. We have good reason to imprison them and attempt to deter future crime. We have good reason to question them. However what makes us believe that it’s alright to treat them so? Most formulations of such a justification are centered around disgust. Sheer anger at what these men may have done. They want to see them punished, they lose their empathy for them because of their crimes and the mental image of atrocities done by similar men. Disgust and anger is not a good metric for deciding on how we institutionally treat fellow human beings. Our institutions are meant to view each case on it’s own merits without sentiment or attachment. It may not achieve this objectiveness as often as it should but I see no reason why we shouldn’t strive for this higher standard in all instances.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

– Thom Paine

We imprison convicted criminals and enemy soldiers to keep them from doing further harm to society and to modify their future behavior. However even in prisons we ought (though sadly often don’t but that’s another post) to treat them as people who made mistakes and are punished. Instead of treating them like depraved subhuman creatures incapable of reforming or living in a civilized society that must be caged and subjected to Pavlovian conditioning. Our history is filled with prisons like this that lock away “undesirables” in abject conditions where they cease being treated as humans but animals. How far apart is the idea of torturing terrorists for information in the war on terror to torturing gang members for information in the war on crime or drugs? What is the moral difference between an American white youth in a bad neighborhood and a twelve year old Pakistani youth in Afghanistan? How can you say that it is just and right to imprison one without trial and not the other? By what basis do you say that it is moral and just to torture one and not the other?

This attitude of viewing criminals as less than deserving of the dignity they denied their victims devalues the very things we are trying to preserve with that law. It simply breeds more criminality and more social unrest. If you weren’t filled with hared toward the U.S. before you were, possibly erroneously, imprisoned without trial and tortured you certainly will be by the time you are released.

The next most common argument for torturing our prisoners is that it somehow keeps us safe. Even Dick Cheney, the man who many believe was behind our torture policies, has said that torturing these prisoners has saved us from 24-esque villainous plots. Not only has torture never been an effective source of intelligence but his claims are not vindicated by the facts. Torture does produce confessions, just ask worked on John McCain who, after having been tortured, recorded a “confession” to war crimes. There is a reason though, that no civilian court accepts these forced confessions.Torture simply doesn’t work. There is this pop culture image of the ticking time bomb but these scenarios aren’t close to the reality of our implementation of torture.

Torture doesn’t provide reliable information, it doesn’t deter future acts of terrorism, it doesn’t separate the guilty from the innocent, it treats prisoners like irredeemable animals rather than men, it’s born out of a primeval need for retribution, it’s subjective and capricious, and it is antithetical to civilized justice. All men should have a chance to fight for their innocence. They should be free from capricious cruelty, they should be judged only on what they have done and not on what they might do or who they associate with, or what religion they follow. They should be treated like fellow human beings. If, in the end, we embrace savagery and barbarism as tools to achieve a political end then how are we any better than our enemies? If this is a battle of civilizations then how can casting aside our principles be a winning strategy. If we win only by casting off everything that is worth defending then in the end we’ve lost.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.

– Nietzsche