My thoughts?
No. Torture. Ever.
No 'stress positions', 'waterboarding', or 'sleep deprivation'. No euphemisms for torture at all.
No mind games, no drugs, no Manchurian Candidate stuff.
Why? Two reasons:
1) It don't pay.
2) It ain't American.
It don't pay at both the tactical and strategic level.
Tactically, experts agree that torture is one of the least effective means of gathering reliable information. Better to spend our energy and resources in building relations, and sympathizers, than in destroying our image and driving would-be collaborators into the other camp.
Strategically, the small amount of useful information gained is more than offset by losing our strategic position on top of Moral Hill. Not only does it endanger our own personnel and civilians by creating justification for torture, but it also disallows us from effectively combating other human rights violators. How can we ever keep straight faces in the audience as we accuse China and other countries of these violations while practising the same at home (or, at our 'home away from home' homes at Gitmo, Egypt, Eastern Europe, etc)?
America has developed certain laws and practices with the idea of protecting individual citizens from overzealous government agencies because, well, that's what democracy is - a restraint on government. Though our past is not spotless, and we are less than perfect even today, our citizens still enjoy the best compromise between individual freedom and societal functional necessity. In fact, we have better laws protecting against animal cruelty than many nations have protecting their own citizens. We have taken the ban on 'cruel and unusual punishment' down to the Fido level.
Why compromise our moral position for negligible return? It seems to me that people today are too influenced by unreal Hollywood images of torture and its effect - a la '24' - and not mindful of the actual minimal gain and longer term impact. This unrealistic view of the 'benefit' of torture - without the downside - is a dangerous influence on public opinion.
Also, I don't think people are mindful of how little space there is between crossing and recrossing a moral line. If you have an affair with another woman, it is really crossing a different line to an affair with your wife's sister?
Ineffective and unAmerican, with long term negative consequences. |
