Well, I made myself severely sick last night, reading excerpts from the IG Report detailing the american abuse of prisoners in the soi disant War on Terror (a war lacking a protagonist, definitions, or means of winning or losing or indeed ever coming to a close).
It's pretty brutal, hideous stuff. And - idiot me - what upsets me most is the arrogant stupidity of it.
Torture is evil: in a world that's composed of almost nothing but shades of grey, torture is one of those few things you can point at, and go, that is wrong, that is evil, that should never be done. I mean, this is not subtle philosophizing here, this is simple evil that any child above the moral level of pulling wings off flies can identify.
Torturing your admittedly evil opponents is to give up the moral high ground, and to render yourselves no better than the torturers. It strengthens their hands, garners them more recruits, and makes you publicly odious and loathed - as indeed it did in the Bush Presidency, among those who would have been staunch supporters.
But beyond that - if you're such a moral simpleton as Vice President Cheney, who apparently believes that brutal cruel violence can only be met by equal or greater savagery*, and who seems to believe that America can only survive by abandoning all ideals and becoming more savage and vicious than the Mongol Empire at its worst** - torture doesn't work. It famously, absolutely does not work. It has an enormously long history of not working, from at least the later Assyrian monarchs onwards - the Romans could produce witnesses to fill Yankee stadium that torture does not work. The current Turkish state (and the Iranians for what it is worth) has been trying to crush Kurdish rebellion and quasi-terrorism with torture for at least 60 years, and it did not work.
It does not work because the truly hard men will die rather than giving up information, or will yield a melange of truth and lies impossible to untangle, the weak men will immediately break and tell you anything they think you want to hear, true or not, and the great majority will break after a shorter or longer time, and they will also tell you what they think you want to hear: that is what you're motivating them to do, after all. It does not - indeed, cannot - produce reliable, actionable intelligence, it's supposed purpose.
Or, rather, torture does not work to reduce terrorism. What torture does deliver, is a terrible reputation and an increasing polarisation amongst the oppressed: the meek become more terrified, the stubborn become more intransigent (and produce more terrorists). To some people's perceptions, sufficient torture will cow a population into semi-submission (terrorists aside), and allow them to portray this as a sort of peace.
I can only suppose this is what Vice President Cheney and the segments of the CIA and Pentagon that pushed this approach, actually intended - to try and cow Iraq into a temporary show of submission long enough to be able to declare a final victory, before fleeing the ship of state like plague-ridden, scabrous rats.
Now try to get your head around this - they are trying to cow the Iraqis, who have just emerged from 30 years under one of the more spectacularly brutal and careless dictators of the post-war era, with their own ideas of cruelty. Offhand it's hard to think of a more fruitless and pointless effort. Their predecessor in this, Saddam Hussein, killed over two million*** of his own people, and used poison gas on civilian populations. It's hard to top that level of brutality, and I can't see how they could have, short of recruiting a whole separate army to inflict random violence on the population.
(Except, oops, they did that too: check out the private mercenary company Blackwater. However, as all they got were the usual bunch of diletanttes, tired ex-squaddies, and megalomanic ex-officers drunk on their own testosterone, they didn't even oppress the population efficiently, just indulged their own tastes for murder, rapine and theft in a fairly random manner).
I cannot comprehend these actions, except perhaps in some sort of pseudo-Freudian psychobabble about manhood, ego satisfaction and proving themselves. I mean, these are passably-intelligent, more-or-less educated**** people: and the facts about torture aren't exactly secrets. There is in fact reams and reams of information about the uselessness of all forms of torture, endless studies of Russian & Chinese brainwashing & other approaches from the Cold War era, all pointing to the futility of torture in achieving anything beyond scare tactics and show-trials for public propaganda.
I have to say, I can only applaud the Attorney General's move to prosecute at least a few of the thugs responsible for the most egregious excesses. I would - dearly - wish that this would reach much much higher up the hierarchy of callous evil that approved this, and prosecute (at least) the lawyers who provided a feeble figleaf of legalism on completely spurious grounds, and the inhuman and intolerable cabinet members who approved and urged this action, not excluding the last Vice President.
I have to recognise, tho, that the price of these prosecutions would be a calamitous political war of proportions unknown since the Brothers Gracchi, and would mean the only thing the current President would achieve, even if re-elected, would be these prosecutions. Political deadlock would be a complete understatement - there would be a flurry of lawsuits, protests, threats of violence, angry menaces and a blizzard of resistance, interruption and discord such as to make the current protests about health reform look like afternoon tea at the Ritz.
Lord knows, there are too many pressing problems that need to be dealt with, to let that happen. If political war is the price, better to deal with the improving the future, and let the memory of these callous fools fester and rot in the history books, where their memories will stink worse with the passage of the years.
In some ways, the worst of it is that this is America. If this was the Brits, I'd just shrug and go, well, what can you expect, they've been practising the cruelest and most foolish realpolitik for at least the last hundred and fifty years. America has always held itself to a higher standard, and I think we all expect it from them, the knowledge that they are actually capable of some morality beyond blind self-interest, even if only intermittently.
I'll close with the words of one of the better wordsmiths of the last century, Randy Newman:
Political Science
Noone likes us
I dont know why
we may not be perfect
but heaven knows we try
But all around even our friends put us down
Lets drop the Big One and see what happens
We give them money but are they grateful?
No they're spiteful, and they're hateful
They dont respect us so lets surprise them
We'll drop the Big One and pulverise them!
Now Asia's too crowded, and Europe's too old
Africa's far too hot and Canada's too cold
and South America stole our name
Let's drop the Big One, there'll be noone left to blame us
Well, boom goes London, and boom Paree!
More room for you and more room for me
and every city the whole world round
will just be another american town
Oh how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll have Japanese kimonos, baby
There'll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
so lets drop the Big One now
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* though not in person, goodness no - the closest he's come to personally risking his precious skin would be when he shot his lawyer in the face with a shotgun, while hunting.
** And in passing I'd have to say that the Mongols have a worse reputation than they deserve - as conquerors they were unlimitedly cruel, but as rulers they were on the whole more benevolent than any of the Chinese dynasties or the British Empire, and at least the equal of the Romans.
*** estimates from the Economist, circa 2002 (I cba looking them up sorry, just recall reading them before the 2nd Iraq war).
**** Insert jokes about the american education system here
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