Blog Against Torture Day

[filkertom]

I understand, from a myriad of sources, that today is Blog Against Torture Day.

What the fuck kind of country have we become, what kind of sick world do we live in, that we even have to have this?

Torture is cruel. It involves hurting another person so severely that they will tell you what you want to know, give you what you want them to give. Vilely cruel. Heartlessly cruel.

Torture is against the law. Domestic and international. For the most obvious of reasons. If it's not obvious, I'd like you to keep your hands where I can see 'em.

Torture diminishes us as a nation, as a people. When we are willing to resort to torture to get what we want, where do we stop? Answer: Obviously, we don't.

Torture ruins our reputation. We are now known as a nation that tortures... and lies about it. And admonishes other countries about it. What utter hypocrisy.

Torture makes the world more dangerous for us. It's known that we torture our prisoners, so why should our enemies feel any duty or obligation or moral suasion from us not to torture our people if they capture some?

Torture doesn't work. Time and again, it is shown that torture victims will tell their tormenters what they want to hear, whether or not it's true, just to get them to stop. There really aren't very many goddamn Jack Bauer scenarios, and the ones Jack successfully tortures people in are, ah, written that way.

Torture is wrong. Period.

Comments

[madamruppy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing this out to me, I shall have to post my rant on the subject.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

I've heard the argument put forth in some circles that our enemies are likely to torture captured Americans anyway, so restraining from torture ourselves in the hopes other nations will follow suit is just Liberal Naïveté.

Now, even if this weren't taken directly from chapter three of Dehumanizing the Enemy 101, it doesn't negate that, as you so correctly point out, torture doesn't work.

Torture makes us into that cruelest of creatures, the angry mob. To satisfy our lust for vengence, we inflict unforgiveable harm, and we lie to ourselves about the reason why. We tell ourselves it's for our own safety. We tell ourselves it's necessary. We concoct masurbatorialy reassuring what-ifs in which reducing a human being to a whimpering mass of tissue manages to save lives, and like Pontius Pilate, we wash our hands of the ethical implications.

And all the while, with every waterboarding, every nipple clamping, every humiliation, the beast within us -- individually and nationally -- asserts that much more control.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

"I've heard the argument put forth in some circles that our enemies are likely to torture captured Americans anyway..."

GWB: Hey, Mr. Liberal! Can I torture this suspected terrorist?
Joe Liberal: No. Torture is wrong.
GWB: But all our enemies are doing it!
Joe Liberal: George, I wouldn't let you do something just because all the cool kids were doing it. Our enemies aren't even the cool kids on the planet. Now go to your room, and stay there until 2009. And you're not allowed to write up any signing statements, either.

(Yeah, I wish that had happened.)

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

Not much to add, except that not only is the US engaging in torture, an atrocity under any circumstances, but it's clear that the practice is being used indiscriminately, on individuals for whom evidence even of _association_ with terrorists, much less actual guilt, is sketchy at best. It seems to be the default practice, not the last resort.

Sad and revolting.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

"the ones Jack successfully tortures people in are, ah, written that way"

This is one of the scariest things about the people who defend the use of torture. They base their arguments on hypothetical situations, or on fiction. They're not dealing with reality.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

I'm increasingly convinced that 24's the reason so many people in the States are enthusiastic supporters of torture; they really do seem to believe that the world works that way, that we're always a minute away from destruction.

(I've also heard the argument that the show was produced with that end in mind.)

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

I was wondering many times about the real agenda behind 24, if there was any. I found Jack Bauer to become more disgusting in every season, and stopped in season 6 when he tortured his brother to death.
To a non-American like me, 24 could have been produced as a propaganda against the US. I mean seriously, if the USSR had have more creative creators of propaganda, they could have developed the show.
In the show, the US is relentless, merciless, and evil.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'd like to see everyone who writes, directs and even acts* on the show "24" taken out and tortured until they confess to some made-up crime, then returned to produce more episode of their show. I'd like to see how they'd deal with all of those "heroic torture" scenes after having experienced it personally.

*Not the set designers, stage hands, makeup, etc. Those people have no control or input on what goes on in the show, so they shouldn't be included.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Mm. I think, since we're doing hypotheticals here, I would rather fake up some evidence that someone close to them has been dealt with in that way, and not let them know that it hasn't happened till they've expressed their outrage and horror. On tape. For public broadcast. Far less messy, if just as morally ambiguous, and anyway I like happy endings.

And I would leave out the actors. They're just doing what they're told, and need to be able to play whatever part they're given, whether it's Saint Francis or Josef Mengele, with equal conviction. It's the people who create the situations who need the lesson.

[trifleresplende.livejournal.com]

"Just doing what they're told" - I think Josef Mengele would have used that same excuse. Not that I'm calling the actors on 24 genocidal torturing madmen, but consistency is nice.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

And a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, not that I'm calling anyone's mind here small. If we punish actors for playing monsters with conviction, we are saying that we want to go back to the old world of black-browed moustachio-twirling villians with I AM A BAD GUY painted on the back of their capes. And at this point I start to get uncomfortable for a whole other reason.

I don't watch 24, so someone will have to help me out here. Is there absolutely no hint of moral ambiguity about the way Bauer is played, and for that matter, since I'm asking, about the way he's written? Is there absolutely no suggestion that the things he does might be wrong, on a level that the people who base their government policy on his antics are simply ignoring?

In the end, I suppose you're right. Consistency is nice, and since I wouldn't torture anyone physically, I would probably be against torturing them mentally as well. I'd prefer to live in a country where the people knew how to elect a government composed of decent, intelligent and wise people, so that writers and artists could be free to express themselves and their own opinions without running the risk of being blamed for what the government does. Anyone know of such a place?

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

Jack Bauer developes, or rather deteriorates, in the course of the show. In the first season, he has actually a difficult time after killing someone, even though he does not hesitate even a second, later he does torture as a last resort, than he tortures everyone who might know something, including his girlfriend (though he is not really into it that particular time), he btw. has the child of a terrorist shot to get him to talk, and later, as the sad endpoint (my personal endpoint, too, as I stopped watching the show that instant) he tortures his own brother to death.
Jack, btw, is not really evil. Just misguided. By his country that has no problems in selling him out after he sacrificed everything, including his soul.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

For an example of just how ugly a mob bent on torture can be, see the very disturbing tar-and-feathering scene in the first chapter of the John Adams bioseries currently running on HBO. And then watch the rest to see how a REAL American patriot feels about justice for all and the rule of law.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

If the apologists drag out fictional Jack Bauer, then I bring out fictional Judge Ooka Tadesuka from Edo-era Japan -- 400-year-old tales of the clever judge and his love for justice.

Most people know of Judge Ooka from the amusing "stealing a smell" case. But one story has the kind, gentle judge mercilessly torture a beloved old family retainer (in front of his horrified guests, other Edo judges) until the old man confessed to stealing an orange...which the Judge then produced from his sleeve. He immediately had his own physician tend to the old man -- and responded to the horrified responses of the judges that he did that horrific thing to prove that torture did not work -- and there would never again be torture used in the courts of Japan to extract confessions from criminals.

Inventing war, torturing political opponents (oops, "suspected terrorists")...I don't think a whole lot of people will weep too hard when the Visigoths overrun this empire and end it.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

That's positively brilliant. I must learn more about this Judge Ooka Tadesuka you speak of.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia has him as Tadasuke, and historically real as well. There are some novels, though, which might be of interest.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Oops, my bad. I was trying to remember from a collection of Judge Ooka stories I'd read as a kid.

[mstrhypno.livejournal.com]

One small problem - torture WAS used in the courts, or at least by the law enforcement officials, up until about the Meiji Era.

Fictional arguments don't work, even if the basic fact that torture doesn't work is true.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

I was unfamiliar with the orange theft story, but I was familiar with a story in which Ooka refused to have two contradictory witnesses tortured because of the unreliability of torture.

There is also a Ming Dynasty story in which a man is found with stolen property, having innocently bought it from the thief, and accused of the murder of the rightful owner. Unfortunately, the local judge takes this as irrefutable evidence and orders the buyer tortured until he confesses as required under Imperial Chinese procedure, and then executed. Only after the the buyer's friends learn of the miscarriage of justice do they investigate and locate the real murderer.

[gavroche42.livejournal.com]

Torture is wrong, unless it's consensual, and between adults.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

To be fair... There are many who would say the same about such things as abortion and gay marriage.

And no, I am NOT trying to justify torture!

I'm just trying to point out that, even if something is inherently wrong, it's dangerous to think of such things, or ANYTHING for that matter, in terms of absolutes.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Honestly, you can use the core arguments in favor of those: Who's being hurt? (Yes, yes, I know the anti-abortion crowd will say Teh Precious Life Of An Innocent Child. A child they couldn't care less about before or after, just that damnable all-important birth.)

Abortion is a medical procedure on behalf of the mother. Gay marriage is a legal/societal affirmation of a committed relationship. Torture is inflicting physical pain and damage on someone. Pretty clear-cut to me, actually.

[jss]

> Pretty clear-cut to me, actually.

Yes, but you have working cognitive functions.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

See here (http://hitchkitty.livejournal.com/95146.html) for comments on torture vs. abortion.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

I'm not bing pro-torture, here. I think it's disgusting and reprehensible as any of you do.

Rather, I'm being anti-absolutism.

Tell me something is wrong, and you've earned my ear
Tell me something is absolutely wrong, and you've earned my doubt.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Torture as a means of getting information is a crock of s***.
Torture as a means of punishment, on the other hand (if still attached) is logically justifiable, and
Torture as a means of satisfying sadistic urges (sexual or otherwise) is also justifiable.
Which of these three is the reason for waterboarding? or abusing any Iraqis who are handy?
Torture is the stuff of medaeval "justice". It reduces the so called forces of democracy to the level of the medaevally mindset savages they are trying to purge the world of.

[mstrhypno.livejournal.com]

Really?! So Torture as a means of punishment, on the other hand (if still attached) is logically justifiable, and
Torture as a means of satisfying sadistic urges (sexual or otherwise) is also justifiable?!

So you can "logically" condone Ng and Lake? You can "logically" condone Gacy?

If so, your logic is highly warped. Try looking up Operant Conditioning - negative, and see how justifiable it is. Negative reinforcement (arguable torture would fall into that category as punishment) is NOT effective and, therefore, logically, NOT justifiable, to say nothing of the moral and ethical issues of inflicting UNWANTED DAMAGE on another human being - which is part and parcel of the basis of true torture.

Sorry, that "logic" does not float.

Neither does torture

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

To justify is not to condone, for to condone is to implicitly approve.
And I don't approve. Ng and Lake I know not of, but I don't doubt Gacy managed to rationalise his actions to himself, else why would he have done what he did?
Negative reinforcement is a wonderfully descriptive term....
to my mind torture as punishment isn't negative reinforcement in that once your victim is dead - and torture when applied as punishment (if applied as punishment) normally will lead to death - reinforcement is rather moot. Torture when applied as punishment is an extension of capital punishment (something else I don't actually approve of).

[mstrhypno.livejournal.com]

Justify means

1. To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid: justified each budgetary expense as necessary; anger that is justified by the circumstances.
2. To declare free of blame; absolve.
3. To free (a human) of the guilt and penalty attached to grievous sin. Used of God.
4. Law
a. To demonstrate sufficient legal reason for (an action taken).
b. To prove to be qualified as a bondsman.

I believe the term you were looking for was "rationalize."

As to torture leading normally to death - wrong again, my friend. Ask ANY of the former prisoners of the Hanoi Hilton, the vast majority of whom SURVIVED, many for years, the tortures that were inflicted upon them.

Ask any survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution's Re-Education Camps - same argument - the vast majority of them lived, too.

I could go on and on as torture, when used as punishment, normally lead to death. Even the British Navy's infamous floggings (provably and demonstrably a form of torture) were not designed to KILL, but to CORRECT improper behavior in the eyes of the officers!

Lee Darrow, C.H.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

"Rationalize" will do admirably.
I bow to your erudition, Sir.

[mstrhypno.livejournal.com]

Torture is wrong. I've said it before and I stand by what I have said. Even in the classic case of having one guy who knows about a WMD that's about to go off scenario, torture is still wrong. And it does not work.

But try telling that to a President who said about just such a case as the one I mentioned what he would do, replied, "I'd hope Jack Bauer was on the case." or words to that effect... and that is scary.. even scarier that an administration that has admitted to torture in at least three cases - before Congress - in Sworn testimony... and NOBODY has been brought to trial, or even charged for it!

After WWII we EXECUTED 8 Japanese officers for waterboarding US soldiers. Where does anyone think we picked up the method - "Torture Methods for Dummies?!"

It's wrong. But, as history has shown, all the blogging in the world is not going to sway this Administration one scintilla from its path.

And they should be the ones screaming for prosecution!

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Thanks Tom. I made a post in my own LJ http://alverant.livejournal.com/4556.html

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

And how did we get to needing this in such a short time period?
We are better than this!