Arguing against torture

By Donald Kirk

Throughout human history people have tortured people to assert their power, to destroy enemies, to gain information ― or simply to hurt those whom they don’t like. No doubt such cruelty has worked to prop up regimes, but in the long run the torturers also suffer. Certainly it was that way for both the Germans and the Japanese in World War II when each of them, in different ways, committed unspeakable atrocities.

Now, for the first time on such a broad scale, Americans have to consider whether torture of terrorists at the prison on the historic U.S. base at Guantanamo, a bastion of U.S. military strength on the southeastern corner of Communist anti-American Cuba, was really a good idea. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA ``techniques,” including torture of those held at Guantamano and “rendition” of many more to the tender mercies of dozens of other countries with still more fearsome techniques, exposes graphically the cruelty of the CIA inquisition.

That torture rarely produces meaningful dividends in terms of useful information is almost incidental. Even if on occasion the victims spill serious secrets, torture can still not be justified under American law. That’s not to say that U.S. forces have never inflicted cruel punishment on those whom they’ve captured. Nor would anyone claim that the U.S. prison system stands as a model of humanity and fair play.

Rather, the American public by and large, historically, has not accepted the use of torture as a right and proper means of dealing with the enemy -- that is, until the release of the Senate report. Since then we’ve been treated most visibly to defenses of whatever the CIA did by a stream of rationalizations led by Dick Cheney, who was vice president when some of the most flagrant abuses occurred, and by Fox news.

At Fox, an SSS squad of Shouters, Screechers and Screamers has been offering every conceivable explanation for why torture is Ok. One oft-heard argument is, what’s wrong with torturing terrorists when hundreds if not thousands of innocent civilians have been killed by strikes by drone aircraft manned by technicians in an air-conditioned room in Nevada? And why should Americans worry about torturing terrorists, Fox commentators ask, considering that thousands of civilians were killed by the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire-bombing of Tokyo in 1945?

One response is to note that cruelty, however massive in scale, doesn’t justify other forms of cruelty. In the U.S., the rights of prisoners may be ignored all too often but more often than not are assiduously honored in gathering information and testimony. Police officers and prosecutors have to advise prisoners of their rights or risk losing their cases. Prisoners may be harassed and beaten by other prisoners but rarely by their guards.

As a rule you don’t hear of waterboarding and sleep deprivation in American prisons while a number of organizations battle to preserve the rights of prisoners and combat threats of torture. Would the U.S. be stronger and more productive if police departments made a habit of torturing suspects, killing a few more than we’ve heard about in sensational headline-grabbing episodes?

In fact, the U.S. would probably be a good deal weaker if egregious human rights violations against U.S. citizens were common practice. The American economy has grown ever more powerful since the Civil War and the end of slavery. Torture is evidence of the weakness of regimes that are so poorly governed as to be unable to maintain power in any other way. Certainly North Korea, one of the world’s weaker countries, is a prime example of a nation that relies on human rights abuses to prop up the regime but is a failed state in terms of productivity and the well-being of the mass of its citizens.

For that matter, South Korea in the first generation after the Korean War was also known for cruelty toward prisoners. President Park Chung-hee counted on his Korean Central Intelligence Agency, now the National Intelligence Service, to ferret out his foes, subjecting them to torture in a prison near Mt. Namsan in central Seoul. It took years of protest, while South Korea was advancing economically, to stop most of the torture by regimes so insecure, so concerned about their own power, as to see that the country would advance to far greater heights in an atmosphere of fair play.

It would be easy to say the U.S. ranks with a number of other countries, whether quasi- or full-fledged dictatorships, that inflict cruel forms of extra-judicial punishment. However, the Senate report also shows the self-correcting nature of democracy. It’s too late to undo the harm inflicted on prisoners at Guanatamo, but the report may help to make repetition of the same techniques quite unlikely.

Columnist Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has been covering human rights issues in the U.S. and Asia for decades. He’s reachable at kirkdon@yahoo.com.