Torture should be out of the question
Some questions
– one especially – have bothered me since they were raised
several years ago and it came up recently on a talk show.
Torture should be out of the question
Some questions – one especially – have bothered me since they were raised several years ago and it came up recently on a talk show.
Why does the United States of America even engage in discussing the merits of torture? Torture is evil. It is morally degrading to render pain or humiliation upon a helpless person, even if he would torture you without the slightest qualm were the positions reversed.
But what if by torturing one or more people one could extract valuable information and save many innocent lives? That poses a moral dilemma that many have run over repeatedly in their minds.
Experts – including those who have applied it – maintain that torture for the purpose of getting accurate information has been proven worthless. They say that those undergoing great physical pain or stress will tell the torturer anything to please him, to make him desist. They will fabricate stories if they know nothing about the subject. Its purpose, then, is rendered useless.
When it was applied for merely recreational sadism such as at Abu Garhib Prison in Iraq where moral cretins forced prisoners into humiliating and degrading postures, its revelation was reprehensible to the entire world.
Why did the Administration make an end-run through the Congress to evade a Supreme Court ruling that detainees at Guantanamo Bay should not be subjected to military tribunals?
Why did the Attorney General of the United States say that the Geneva Convention, outlining the treatment of prisoners-of-war, is “quaint” and “outmoded”?
Why does the President not understand “outrages against human dignity” as forbidden by the Geneva Convention? Suppose that people you know – your neighbor, your son, your mother, yourself – were compelled to stand in a contorted position for 18 hours at a time without a break for voiding excrement, or had water forced up the nostrils to simulate drowning, or were threatened with salivating dogs? Would the meaning then be clearer?
Why do we condone it or ignore it? Some Americans suggest that “the government knows far better than we do what course of action to take.” That is an easy, even cowardly, way to sidestep a distressing issue.
Several months ago in discussing those practices by the administration, a friend demanded my opinion of the President. I replied that I had no respect for his morals or intelligence. He said, “What I’m hearing is that you don’t like America.” I said I did not like the situation the President had placed us in. He repeated his comment, then suggested that I move to some other country “since you don’t like America.”
But my friend and I are old enough to remember newsreels of Nazi Germany before World War II, when cavernous halls filled with supporters of Adolf Hitler erupted in one gigantic voice with “Sieg, heil!” to whatever Hitler said. The Germans who dissented soon disappeared.
Is it far-fetched to believe that the erosion of our personal freedoms is so gradual we do not notice it?
The Germans didn’t think so either.
