![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptThis is a specific post for Blog Anti-Torture Day, crafted by the Unabashed Feminism department head ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ldragoon. The short version of this post is such: Torture doesn't work for the purposes of gathering intelligence. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. By the time torture is used, it's not intelligence that the torturers want, but to convince the victim that they aren't actually a person. In that light, the reason why the W. Bush administration wants to keep torture while claiming they don't torture makes much more sense.
And now, the long version: The recent shift in the United States' position on the use of torture, "enhanced interrogation techniques", or whatever particular bowdlerization someone wants to use, is troubling. Torture is what They do, for whatever They that Oceania has always been at war against. A stock part of the Square-Jawed American Hero story is when he (and yes, it's almost always he, for reasons that the Unabashed Feminism department can probably explain better than I) is captured by the enemy and subjected to cruel torture that hurts him greatly, leaves wounds, but also makes his desire to defeat Them that much greater. We know They are evil because they torture the Hero and the Innocents equally cruelly, and usually end up killing the Innocents. Just from that narrative alone, you would think that the United States wouldn't want to join up with Them.
The government of the W. Bush administration tells us that there's a pressing need to get useful intelligence out of the prisoners they've captured. They also assume that the prisoners have no motivation to tell them the truth, or anything at all, for that matter. The natural conclusion out of this is that the prisoners need inducement to tell the truth. What that inducement is depends. Reduced sentences, some luxuries, possibly a good word with the judge, or immunity from prosecution are all things that We can offer to get intelligence. It will need to be fact-checked, but all intelligence needs fact-checking, no matter what circumstances it was obtained under.
Problems start when there's a third assumption added into the mix - that the prisoners are so ideologically set in their ways that no inducement or temptation to defect will be successful. If the guards and interrogators believe that the prisoners are all radicals, plotting escape and waiting for any opportunity to get back to their fellows and continue spreading terror, then instead of convincing, the mindset turns to "cracking" the prisoner's shell until they confess everything and tell all they know. The easiest way we know of how to "crack" someone is to put them in pain, hoping that the self-preservation instinct will kick in and the prisoner will tell all. Thus, all sorts of interesting devices and "stress positions" have evolved over the years to do just that. Thumbscrews, the Rack, dripping water, pressing, the bed of Procrustes, all of those things and more have been born from the idea that pain gets results.The truth is, though, pain usually gets people to say whatever their captor wants them to say, whether true or false. We know this. We've had examples in our history that show this pretty easily - the Inquisition's search for witches, for example. At some fundamental level, everyone knows that torture doesn't work for intelligence purposes.
So if torture makes the United States into one of Them, and it really doesn't work anyway, then why do it? And why insist that there be a capacity to do so, in spite of all of this? Well, there are a couple things that torture does well. Torture is very good at inspiring fear in a populace. If you're going to attack Them, and you know They will torture anyone they catch, it makes it harder to muster brave souls. If you're one of the citizens of Their empire, then it will be much harder to stand up and tell Them that it's wrong for Them to torture, or to break Their own laws. If you've been captured by Them, the anticipation of torture or the time between sessions is quite the time to be inspired by fear.
Torture is also very efficient at creating and enforcing the idea that the class of people being tortured are not actually people. The laws of the land are for citizens. Slaves can be beaten with impunity. Non-citizens can be jailed for arbitrary reasons. They have no rights nor protections. Which makes it all that much easier to think of them as not-people. The real goal of torture is to convince the person on the rack that they aren't a person by systematically removing every assumption, given, or belief the victim has about their status.
Bringing these ideas out and looking at the W. Bush administration through those lenses, it becomes a lot easier to see why he insists that the Untied States doesn't torture, while also insisting that the United States be able to torture. If the detainees at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib are people/citizens, then it's absolutely true that the United States has been torturing them. But the W. Bush administration doesn't see them as people. The rights afforded citizens in the United States are not extended to them. The rights afforded to prisoners of war are not given to them. They are seen as things to draw intelligence out of, intelligence that is unlikely to be true. And through the cycle that assumes the prisoners are lying, so they need more pain to tell the truth, but that more pain will only make them lie more, so they need more pain to make them tell the truth, etc. the line between interrogation and torture is quickly vaulted over.
The Untied States does torture. With the blessing and sanction of the government, in violation of treaties that the United States has been a signatory to for decades. We have joined Them, and there doesn't seem to be enough people in the populace or the government willing to say no. Perhaps they are afraid that the government will arrest or harass them for speaking out, like it has to anti-war advocates. Perhaps they are worried about appearing "soft on national security" or not "supporting the troops", and are thus silent. Perhaps they still believe that torture is a justifiable method of gathering intelligence. Whatever the reasoning is, it is insufficient. Human beings all deserve the rights of personhood, even if that particular person and I are diametrically opposed to each other. To do otherwise is to invite calamity upon one's people and to retard the evolution of human beings. Torture is atavistic, destructive, and cruel. The human race is better than this.
ldragoon. The short version of this post is such: Torture doesn't work for the purposes of gathering intelligence. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. By the time torture is used, it's not intelligence that the torturers want, but to convince the victim that they aren't actually a person. In that light, the reason why the W. Bush administration wants to keep torture while claiming they don't torture makes much more sense.And now, the long version: The recent shift in the United States' position on the use of torture, "enhanced interrogation techniques", or whatever particular bowdlerization someone wants to use, is troubling. Torture is what They do, for whatever They that Oceania has always been at war against. A stock part of the Square-Jawed American Hero story is when he (and yes, it's almost always he, for reasons that the Unabashed Feminism department can probably explain better than I) is captured by the enemy and subjected to cruel torture that hurts him greatly, leaves wounds, but also makes his desire to defeat Them that much greater. We know They are evil because they torture the Hero and the Innocents equally cruelly, and usually end up killing the Innocents. Just from that narrative alone, you would think that the United States wouldn't want to join up with Them.
The government of the W. Bush administration tells us that there's a pressing need to get useful intelligence out of the prisoners they've captured. They also assume that the prisoners have no motivation to tell them the truth, or anything at all, for that matter. The natural conclusion out of this is that the prisoners need inducement to tell the truth. What that inducement is depends. Reduced sentences, some luxuries, possibly a good word with the judge, or immunity from prosecution are all things that We can offer to get intelligence. It will need to be fact-checked, but all intelligence needs fact-checking, no matter what circumstances it was obtained under.
Problems start when there's a third assumption added into the mix - that the prisoners are so ideologically set in their ways that no inducement or temptation to defect will be successful. If the guards and interrogators believe that the prisoners are all radicals, plotting escape and waiting for any opportunity to get back to their fellows and continue spreading terror, then instead of convincing, the mindset turns to "cracking" the prisoner's shell until they confess everything and tell all they know. The easiest way we know of how to "crack" someone is to put them in pain, hoping that the self-preservation instinct will kick in and the prisoner will tell all. Thus, all sorts of interesting devices and "stress positions" have evolved over the years to do just that. Thumbscrews, the Rack, dripping water, pressing, the bed of Procrustes, all of those things and more have been born from the idea that pain gets results.The truth is, though, pain usually gets people to say whatever their captor wants them to say, whether true or false. We know this. We've had examples in our history that show this pretty easily - the Inquisition's search for witches, for example. At some fundamental level, everyone knows that torture doesn't work for intelligence purposes.
So if torture makes the United States into one of Them, and it really doesn't work anyway, then why do it? And why insist that there be a capacity to do so, in spite of all of this? Well, there are a couple things that torture does well. Torture is very good at inspiring fear in a populace. If you're going to attack Them, and you know They will torture anyone they catch, it makes it harder to muster brave souls. If you're one of the citizens of Their empire, then it will be much harder to stand up and tell Them that it's wrong for Them to torture, or to break Their own laws. If you've been captured by Them, the anticipation of torture or the time between sessions is quite the time to be inspired by fear.
Torture is also very efficient at creating and enforcing the idea that the class of people being tortured are not actually people. The laws of the land are for citizens. Slaves can be beaten with impunity. Non-citizens can be jailed for arbitrary reasons. They have no rights nor protections. Which makes it all that much easier to think of them as not-people. The real goal of torture is to convince the person on the rack that they aren't a person by systematically removing every assumption, given, or belief the victim has about their status.
Bringing these ideas out and looking at the W. Bush administration through those lenses, it becomes a lot easier to see why he insists that the Untied States doesn't torture, while also insisting that the United States be able to torture. If the detainees at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib are people/citizens, then it's absolutely true that the United States has been torturing them. But the W. Bush administration doesn't see them as people. The rights afforded citizens in the United States are not extended to them. The rights afforded to prisoners of war are not given to them. They are seen as things to draw intelligence out of, intelligence that is unlikely to be true. And through the cycle that assumes the prisoners are lying, so they need more pain to tell the truth, but that more pain will only make them lie more, so they need more pain to make them tell the truth, etc. the line between interrogation and torture is quickly vaulted over.
The Untied States does torture. With the blessing and sanction of the government, in violation of treaties that the United States has been a signatory to for decades. We have joined Them, and there doesn't seem to be enough people in the populace or the government willing to say no. Perhaps they are afraid that the government will arrest or harass them for speaking out, like it has to anti-war advocates. Perhaps they are worried about appearing "soft on national security" or not "supporting the troops", and are thus silent. Perhaps they still believe that torture is a justifiable method of gathering intelligence. Whatever the reasoning is, it is insufficient. Human beings all deserve the rights of personhood, even if that particular person and I are diametrically opposed to each other. To do otherwise is to invite calamity upon one's people and to retard the evolution of human beings. Torture is atavistic, destructive, and cruel. The human race is better than this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-28 08:06 pm (UTC)I would certainly argue that, clearly, the human race is -not- better than this. In fact, this is a perfect example of -why- it is as horrible and despicable as it is.
This fact does not, however, absolve us of our duty to aspire to be better.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-28 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 06:27 am (UTC)Today's GitP is particularly relevant.
I was going to write something but to be honest, it's all been said. and I'm pretty sick of the focus on the US's torture policies. I'd blog about torture in general but that almost seems like it'd break the spirit of the event.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-30 04:57 pm (UTC)