The Real Story

As we stumble about in the financial apocalyptic wilderness, thanks should be given for those too brief moments of frivolity and mirth, without which our days would be indeed drear. Most recently, such entertainment has been generously provided by the leaders, spokespeople, apologists, camp followers, and enablers associated with the Republican party. Not that they are a numerically impressive band, mind you. But clearly its members have taken with a vengeance to the notion that having nothing to say and saying it loudly go hand in hand.

So we have the present spectacle of the GOP waxing wroth over Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to clear the record on what she was, or wasn’t told by her CIA briefers and when she was, or wasn’t told it. As an attempt to divert attention, this is world class. The good Speaker will presumably sort out her stories and be judged, as is right and proper, by her Congressional colleagues and constituents. What is of nearly infinitely greater moment is the issue that gave rise to the Speaker’s discomfiture in the first place, that being the imposition of torture on detainees by and in the name of the U.S.

At the outset, it would be well to dispense with the prissy labeling of this practice as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” George Orwell couldn’t have done better. Beyond conjuring an anodyne name, those responsible for this long-playing horror show were evidently sufficiently concerned by what they were doing to be guided – exonerated before the fact, if you will – by legal opinions the logic of which was no less tortured than those subjected to the grotesque allowed practices.

But still come those, the former Vice President leading the pack, who claim the ends justified the means, and that the absence of a repetition of 9/11 is proof positive and ample justification for whatever was done. Against this outrageous position stand several arguments against the use of torture:

It’s illegal. A Nixonian (or, distressingly, Condoleezian) “If the President does it, that makes it legal” justification notwithstanding, torture – as the term is commonly understood – is prohibited by, among other strictures, the Geneva Convention. In 1947 a Japanese officer was tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding a U.S. citizen.

It doesn’t work. Two “high value” Al Qaeda prisoners were subjected to 183 and 83 applications of waterboarding. One might wonder what fresh information was likely to be offered up after the 10th session. Let alone the 50th. Or 150th. Asked in 2008 if “enhanced interrogation techniques” had been effective, Robert Mueller, the Bush-appointed Director of the FBI, said, “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

It’s counter-productive. Beyond serving as an A+ recruitment tool for our enemies, the U.S. use of torture has been roundly condemned by our allies, even to the extent, in the specific case of Turkey, of inhibiting our Middle East military efforts. Even more distressingly and damaging, abandonment of the higher moral ground compromises our ability to lead by example, to engage in useful diplomacy, in fact to do much at all in pursuit of our legitimate interests in ways that don’t involve blowing things and people up. And by what right could we protest the inhuman treatment of a U.S. citizen by some unfriendly nation when we ourselves have done no less?

There are alternatives. In the real life, far away from Jack Bauer’s fantasy world, the elicitation of information from those who would initially rather withhold it is a practice about as old as hills. See, for example, any police drama or real-life practice. Someway, somehow, the commonweal has managed to survive an endless series of enemies, not to mention their lawyers, without resorting to the thumbscrews. A CIA officer offered this nice distinction: “If you torture a suspect, he may tell you the location of his safe house. If you befriend him, he may tell you it’s booby-trapped.”

So let’s review. Torture is a bad idea because it’s illegal, doesn’t work, is counter-productive, and has alternatives. And that, not Nancy’s self-justifications, is the real story.