Torture is not a Gray Area

Excellent piece by Andrew Sullivan that successfully removes the artificial nuance that various players have tried to attach to Gitmo. Sullivan rightly points out that these waters are not muddy, that torture was conducted in your name. That is torture, and again torture and once more for good measure TORTURE!!! not enhanced interrogation or enthusiastic questioning or playful bullying but torture.

We have been told for so long that “enhanced interrogation techniques” are just “aggressive questioning”; that the ancient waterboarding technique is not torture; that Guantanamo Bay is a model prison facility where detainees are, if anything, molly-coddled (in fact, Rudy Giuliani recentlyopined that “Guantanamo is better than half the Federal prisons.”) We are also told routinely on Fox News that the United States has not and never would torture prisoners; we are told by the New York Times and NPR that use of the word “torture” is too biased; we have been told by many that to argue that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals is such an extreme position it disgraces anyone who states it, and marginalizes them to the fever swamps of leftist haters and hysterics.

Sullivan uses the incident where three Gitmo detainees were tortured to death, despite protestations that they were all suicides, to make his point.

But now we have a clear case of something that pierces through this mendacity like a dagger – Scott Horton’s haunting report in Harpers on those three strange 2006 suicides at Gitmo.

Like Sullivan I am a Brit. I moved to the US at age 41. I don’t know if it is this that makes the issue so cut and dried for both of us – the USA tortured people openly and that is wrong as in war crime wrong not error of judgement wrong. I grew up with the idea that the Geneva Conventions were the last word in human conduct towards enemies, that supposedly civilized countries don’t torture people end of story. Mind you, we were also taught by those same conventions that nations only go to war when they themselves or another country is either attacked or that an attack all but a mathematical certainty. Look what happened there.

In England we were taught that torture is wrong because it is wrong, no further argument needed. Some things just are and the wrongness of torture falls into that category. The arguments in the US often centered around outcomes: Does torture work? If we torture them does that mean they are more likely to torture us? Those of us that come from the torture is wrong because it is wrong school of thought have been sucked into these other arguments whereas we should refuse to give them legitimacy.

I see no pragmatic argument that supports torture, in fact logic leads to the opposite conclusion – that torturing people always works against the nation and the people doing the torturing and you know what? That doesn’t matter because the day that torture was discussed in terms of effectiveness as opposed to morality we were lost. Every time I heard a cable news bobblehead say that we shouldn’t torture their fighters because they might torture ours I wanted to, and truth be known often did, yell at the TV that that wasn’t the point.

Andrew Sullivan is exactly right, the use of torture is not a nuanced issue, there are no shades of gray. I would argue that if we have a duty at this time, it is to let future generations know that at least some of us, a minority of Americans it must be said, understand that torture is always be viewed as wrong – no exceptions.

On a related note, this is a probably a good time to review Keith Olbermann’s opinion piece regarding Obama’s let bygones be bygones strategy regarding the previous administrations war crimes.

Transcript

This is the Obama quote that Olbermann rightly takes issue with, arguing that Obama;s duty is to do whatever in his power to make sure that this chapter in American history is not repeated:

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke.

We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history.

But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.