Apparently we’re finally having the long-delayed national discussion about our practice of torture. The President tried to put it off, but there are lots of Americans who think someone should pay for the damage we’ve done to other people, our international reputation and our ability to effectively fight terrorism.
Oh, this discussion is a real mess now. Obama started the confusion by first signaling that he wanted to move on and not pursue inquiries and prosecutions of the perpetrators. Then he ordered the release of the memos, which only served to remind everyone of what we did to prisoners in our care. We tortured them. We made them stand for days at a time in fixed positions. We stressed their bodies. We threatened them with animals. Worst of all, we took a page from the Chinese Communist torture manual and practiced “waterboarding,” where the prisoner thinks he’s drowning, because he is. The old information, trotted out anew, enflamed people all over again. So Obama then confused the issue further by saying that perhaps some higher-ups might be held responsible.
Enter Dick “always wrong” Cheney. He helpfully opined that all the so-called torture memos should be made public to show that in some cases, torture had been effective in stopping terrorist attacks. Then Obama’s Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair made things worse by appearing to agree with Cheney about the torture. Then he sort of retracted, so now everyone’s screaming from everywhere. Rightfully so.
For me this is a simple argument. We have vastly more to lose by torturing than we could ever gain. Once the world finds out, and the world always does, they realize that all of our high-minded talk about freedom and democracy is just empty words. Purists want to make a distinction between the senseless thuggery of Abu Ghraib and the meticulous waterboarding of Kalid Sheik Muhammad. They’ll tell you that the Abu Ghraib was an aberration. The rest of the world doesn’t see the distinction.
I wonder if any real information comes from torture. Oh, there is probably that one in a million case (once a week, if you watch “24”) where a person could possibly give up key information if you caught them in a lucky and timely fashion. But experts agree that what you usually get from a torture suspect is what they think you want to hear. It might be true, but it could just as easily be false.
Then there’s the dark side of torture. We have killed some of our subjects. We have maimed others. Still others have life-long health problems from our “enhanced interrogation techniques.” (hint: the longer the title of a simple task, the more sinister it is…). And what do we become when we torture? Sheik Khalid Muhammad was reportedly waterboarded more than 180 times in a one-month period. That’s 6 times a day. Sorry, but when you’re doing something that awful that often to another human being, it’s not for information. You’re doing it because you’re enjoying it.
There is a big part of me that would like to close the book on this torture thing and not make any further inquiries. We have punished people for the crimes at Abu Ghraib, but not a single one was an officer. The soldiers there were following orders. Maybe the officers were, too. That’s the problem. I say we have to follow where the trail leads and find out who really gave the orders. Then we can decide what to do about them. Then we’ll have had a national discussion worthy of a great people who shouldn’t have tortured in the first place.
Corbett
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