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 To torture or not to torture...  I don’t think it will come as much of a surprise to many on the informed left that agencies of the United States government are torturing people, have tortured people in our past history and will continue to torture people for the foreseeable future. Nothing short of a total change of heart—the heart of Amerika—its people and its leaders, will change that. I try not to lose too much sleep over it—especially since I can’t do a damned thing about it. So what is it that makes torture by the Bush Administration, Cheney, et al so different? Well for a few things: they admitted it, justified it and enshrined it as an accepted non-covert policy. I think it is admirable that Obama has publicly eschewed this practice and, against Republican hysteria, released the torture memos. Remember please, Bush said exactly the same thing Obama did—that “We don’t torture.” I guess that makes Bush a better informed liar, as I choose to believe Obama has not been briefed on the latest news from Gitmo. Unfortunately, without the bringing to justice of those responsible: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the CIA personnel who did the hands on, the practicing members of the American Psychological Association and others who designed, directed and supervised these atrocities*, these actions on his part are as empty as giving a serial rapist a slap on the wrist and making him promise never to do it again. Our president’s contention that the criminals at the CIA were just following orders stands Nuremberg on its head. It even makes him complicit. Obama’s promise not to do torture might as well be written on empty air for all the practical good it will do. I am a great believer in forgiveness. The Buddhist concept of Metta, loving kindness for all beings, requires us to conduct ourselves with love toward everyone, no matter how repellant their past actions may compel us to characterize them. That is not the same as refraining from justice or trying to stop the irrevocable consequences visited upon the perpetrators of atrocity and death. I am even willing to forgive the mastermind behind all this torture, the Dark Lord, Cheney himself, in the unlikely event of the staging of some kind of a truth and reconciliation program. Of course forgiveness is useless without self-forgiveness and self-forgiveness is impossible in the face of your own ignorance, denial and obstinacy. Bush&Co and many in Congress are still tightly wrapped in the cloak of their own justifications, their horrific lies and rationalizations. There are terrible consequences that we will have to pay in not punishing to the fullest extent of the law, all—and I mean all—of the miscreants. First of all, the world will know we are not serious about torture prohibition. A non-punished crime is not a crime. Obama’s framing of the past willful acts of obvious torture as “mistakes,” not crimes, is, once again, an example of his lamentable habit of trying to please all of the people all of the time. Our military and non-military representatives abroad must understand that there will continue to be no US moral high ground from which we can condemn their being tortured if captured by hostiles. Also these same agents will know there will be no real consequences if they are caught using the torture techniques we have forgiven so many others for committing. As I said, I have no doubt torture will be conducted under the Obama administration. It’s just that it will be conducted, as has been our tradition in the past—covertly. Covert agents must know that there will be severe penalties if caught. This sanction, once back in place, will hopefully serve as a brake on the kind of abuses too often practiced by the CIA and our military throughout the world. I think I have seen enough evidence for the fact that, not only does torture not work, but, as was so persuasively observed by Don Williams, In his essay about the torture of Ibn al Shaykh al Libi, torture too often produces false, disastrously misleading information. Another example of what has been euphemistically described by Bush as “enhanced interrogation” producing really disastrous disinformation was the case of bin Laden’s buddy, Abu Zubaydah who was captured early in the War on Terror. He invented, out of whole cloth, fantastic scenarios for some of the planed al Qaeda terrorist actions that were based upon plots of Hollywood movies he had seen in Afghanistan. These uncritically examined bizarre stories were published far and wide by a gullible media and in official pronouncements by Attorney General, John Ashcroft and other national security officials. The biggest lie of all was Abu Zubaydah’s assertion that the terrorists had developed a devise and a delivery system for what has become known as a “dirty bomb.” Subsequent tests have determined that the actual impact of such a dirty bomb would be minimal, apart from the panic it would cause. Why is it then that no official including Barack Obama has revealed the bogus nature of this threat? The dirty bomb would have the most devastating consequence as a result of the panic that would be caused by deliberately misinformed members of the public. Did this just slip their minds? Why would our government want to deliberately cause panic and fear? Because their interest in our safety and security is microscopic next to their desire to maintain and increase their hold on power and control. Regretfully I am beginning to conclude that Obama and the Democrats are as complicit in these power fantasies as are the Republicans. Darren Wolfe suggests that the two real reasons behind torture are 1) to break the minds and the will of foreign leaders so as to render them incapable of being effective and 2) to serve as a deterrent to others who might wish to resist our imperialism. Of course I think that such a strategy, immoral as it is on its face, is also counterproductive, serving only to swell the ranks of terrorists and other revolutionaries inspired to resist, with further violent acts, the evil of Amerika. I would like to suggest even a third unspoken reason: that torture is nothing more than a transparent rationalization for vengeance. This is a popular, if seldom mentioned, motivation. It satisfies the all-too-human desire for a peculiar kind of ad-hoc justice. American policemen and prison correctional personnel are quite fond of meting out their own brands of this kind of justice against suspects, illegal aliens and perpetrators whom they feel are too coddled by an insufficiently draconian criminal justice system. The fact that our government waterboarded Sheik Mohammed 183 times and Al Libi 83 times shatters my faith in humanity.** The fact that it has been done even to the least of these—the worst of these—clearly, solely out of vengeance alone and done in my name nauseates me. Should the man who is responsible for the death of 2,974 people on 9/11 face justice and receive punishment for his deeds? Most emphatically yes! But hopefully we, as a nation, have not yet sunk to a condition that would shame even the most predatory of the beasts—or have we? All the rules of civilized behavior and especially the tenets of Christ Himself prohibit vengeance as having any agency in the execution of justice. Our survival as a civilization depends upon it. The very air is filled with the numberless cries of victims. Justice, not vengeance, is what they demand and justice is not only required for all victims but for perpetrators as well, regardless if their names be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ibn al Shaykh al Libi and Abu Zubaydah, or Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. === * A Louisiana state board has been sued for failing to investigate possible professional and ethical violations committed by Larry James, who served as the chief psychologist at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The lawsuit alleges that James, a retired Army colonel, helped design and implement the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation programs. Larry James is a licensed psychologist in Louisiana. He is now the dean of Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology in Dayton, Ohio. The lawsuit against the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists was filed by an Ohio-based psychologist named Trudy Bond. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/5/headlines#12 ** There is some disputation by the purveyors of the fair and balanced, Fox News, on the actual number of times these people were waterboarded. Refusing to cite the authority of their source or even citing more than one source, they say that Sheik Mohammed was only waterboarded ten times and al Libi five times. I would gladly buy tickets to see Chris Wallace soil himself and cry “Mommy” after being waterboaded just once. In a 2006 interview with the Red Cross, Mohammed claimed to have been waterboarded in 5 different sessions during the first month of interrogation in his third place of detention.
 Robert Boldt an editor of MWC News, is a freelance film/video producer living in Jefferson City, Missouri. He is active in local politics, worked on the Howard Dean and John Kerry campaigns and is a cofounder of The White Rose Collective. Articles by Bob Boldt at MWC News http://mwcnews.net/bob-boldt |
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