In the early nineties, Stephen Bochco's NYPD Blue took a step that generated immense controversy. They depicted a Detective played by David Caruso torturing a suspect to get information. Today, David Caruso's character on CSI is about the only guy on TV who isn't torturing people.
I just finished 72 hours of 24. An excellent series, but one so awash in torture as to make me nearly immune to it. Not quite. Not so much that don't react with revulsion at the NYT piece about torture in Afghanistan.
more below...
The ascendancy and banality of torture in popular culture is symptomatic of its presence in our subconscious as a fractured and repeated meme, one where we feel differently depending on who is doing the torturing and for what reason. We need to consume cultural products that help us resolve the fears and contradictions we feel. We are addicted to crime dramas because the SCLM feeds us mountains of fear about the ever-present criminals waiting around the corner to kidnap our children and kill our loved ones. In CSI Science ALWAYS defeats the bad guys - an effective deterrent if only bad guys watched CSI. In Law and Order, the cops always find the bad guy, but the legal system often lets us down. Damned activist judges.
Torture-laden product is now filling the same role. If the outcome of torture saves a million people, like it does repeatedly on 24, we let it pass. Jack Bauer is the War Machine, operating ouside the space of the State and of Laws. Going Dark with the unspoken approval of the President of the United States. Jack Bauer is the ultimate Bush-like Hero; the guy who gets results, no matter what the cost in between, or to his own humanity. Christ-like, he sacrifices his own life for us. He fits perfectly with the Bush Agenda, even though he works for a Democratic President in the series.
All of this is a cultural response to the fact that everyone now knows at some low level of awareness that Torture is, in fact, an ongoing and widespread practice now encompassing US forces and agents as much as the the third world countries we employ in that same role.
Article 1 of the Declaration against Torture, adopted unanimously by the U.N. in December 1975 defines torture as:
A. ... any act by which severe pain and suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by, or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession; punishing him for an act he has committed; or intimidating him or other persons.
The main definitional elements contained in the term torture are:
1) the severity of physical or mental pain or suffering caused to the victim;
2) the deliberateness of the act;
3) the fact that the act has a purpose; and
4) the direct or indirect involvement of state officials in the act.
B. Torture constitutes an aggravated and deliberate form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The issue of how one regards "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment" has not been satisfactorily addressed by the General Assembly of the U.N. but the body suggested in 1979 that the definition be interpreted so as to extend the widest possible protection against abuses.
Let there be no doubt at all that the US is now a de facto torturing nation. Why has this happened?
Is it because of an inherent moral failing in the President? The President likes to torture people. He thinks it's cool. I doubt it.
Is it because the President's AG suggested torture was, in spite of everything that has gone before, an ok practice? No, I don't think so. I'm sure there were other opinions and, in any case, the President knows torture is wrong. More likely he might have "wished" he wasn't ordering or condoning torture and Gonzales helped make his wish come true. This still doesn't explain how it got on to the agenda.
Is it because torture is justified against an enemy like al queda? There have been nastier enemies with more power and just as much coming to them.
Is it because honor has gone out of war? I doubt it. How can one compare the "honor" of bombing tens of thousand civilians to pieces to the lack of honor in applying electricity to testicals? That's absurd. Besides, we're not talking about war when we talk about torture. We're talking about intelligence gathering by inflicting pain on people who are not threatening you or anyone else at the moment. They are incarcerated. The point of torture is to extract information from the helpless and undefended on the base assumption that they have something you want. You assume they know the location of the ticking bomb or the dying hostage. Or, in this case, the whereabouts of your enemy you can't seem to find with all the technology in the world.
Answer One: I don't like this answer, but it seems most likely to be the case. We are torturing people because we have always been torturing people. We have been caught now by a confluence of forces. These forces include the ubiquity of information via new media, the questionable nature of the cause we purport to be supporting with torture, the bipolar state of our country and its inherent us-vs-them mentality, and perhaps other forces I can't think of right now. I suggest this answer because we have sworn testimony from other wars that supports it. The Winter Soldiers, for example. We also see it in depictions of "justice" in popular culture. I refer specifically but certainly not exhaustively to the much-debated NYPD Blue scenes where David Caruso's character tortures a suspect to get him to confess or reveal the location of the missing child. The cause, in that case, seems so honorable, and the crook is just hiding behind the legal system. The CIA agents on Alias do it all the time as well. So, torture is just there. It happens. All the time. We haven't stopped using it on foreign combatants or even our own citizens when we find them reprehensible enough. The only measurement seems to be a common agreement on whether it is justifiable given the heinousness of the actions of the person being tortured.
Answer Two: This answer is more platable. We are torturing becaue the current leadership of our country has taken us somewhere where we have lost all moral authority and support from others. The leaders of other governments may speak in general terms about support for us, but their citizens certainly do not share that belief in large numbers. Even at home the majority feel Iraq and the War on Terrah are not going well. And it is at home that the most potent rhetoric and propaganda has been unleashed. This is a failure of unheard of magnitude. And yet, the neocons continue to pursue the course. In pursuing the course, the lack of support has left them with few allies and great enemies...abroad and at home. The Bush administration has alienated our intelligence services to the point where they have had to start their own. Too little too late. No, it seems to me the reason for torture is because nothing else is working. There are no takers for the cash rewards, and those who do get on the payroll (like Chalabi) turn out to be crooks or working for the "other side" or both. So torture is the resort of a desperate power run by those who are desperately clinging to power. They are desperately trying to get something done before it is too late.
In all truth, the current foreign policy direction of our country has no real democratic or popular support anywhere except among a conservative base that is now partially starting to awaken to how they have been abused and hoodwinked. We need only for the truly moral and christian among them to step up and stand beside us and this spell can be broken. I hope it can be the case that those who oppose gay marriage and other liberal ideas can also finally step up and open their eyes and recognize that what Bush is doing is truly immoral and against God's teaching at least to the extent they believe Gay marriage to be.
Christ was tortured by his oppressors before he was crucified. This Passion of the Christ is something that moved millions of christians over the last year. Let's hope the torture of other, contemporary middle easterners can evoke the same empathy and compassion in time to save further damage to our country's reputation and standing in the world.