Blogging Against Torture
Mar. 29th, 2008 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillTo tell you the truth, I wasn't going to pay much attention to this--until I read a contrasting view that got my dander up, and now I believe I have something to say.
I think my first real introduction to torture was when I saw an old WWII movie on TV,. The fleeing good guys, one of whom was injured and being carried by the others, got caught by the Nazis, and when the good guys wouldn't answer questions, one of the Nazis deliberately struck the injured guy's broken leg with a rifle butt. I heard the injured guy catch his breath in pain and fled the room. I remember feeling helpless and sick.
I like to think it was just that I wanted to understand, but I went through a stage when I was fascinated by torture. I got every book I could find on it out of the library, and I read them all, with sick fascination, wanting to turn away but not quite able to put the books down. Most of them, naturally, were about the Inquisition--it being safely far back in history I guess, though I seem to recall there were some on Russian gulags too...
So I think I have something to say on the matter, having some idea of what "stress position" can mean, for instance (the Inquisition had this method of torture where they tied your hands behind your back and then strung you up from the ceiling by them, dislocating both shoulders. Then they left you to hang there for hours. That's an example of stress position.). So when someone says "stress position" it might be a good idea to get more information. Or not, if you have a delicate stomach.
1) Terrorists torture innocent people; we're only doing it to bad guys.
It would be nice to think that, wouldn't it? I'd like to believe that.
But, in Abu Ghraib, by the US Army's own estimate, somewhere between 50% and 90% of the inmates were innocent--had been picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those terrified bound guys, trying to cringe their dangling genitals away from snarling attack dogs? How do you know they all came from the 50% or 20% or 10% who were guilty? The Army didn't know who was guilty, or they'd have saved time and money by turning the innocent ones loose.
The Army almost certainly made mistakes then. So what makes you think that the Army, or the CIA, or whoever's doing the torturing this time, never makes a mistake?
Which means we're torturing innocent people too.
2) It gets us vital information that saves lives.
Well, we have an extensive long-running experiment on that, which gives us a lot of data to look at. The Inquisition. Let's see what kind of vital information torture gathered then:
People confessed to turning into cats. Do you believe a human being can turn into a cat? If you don't--that was bad information.
People confessed to turning into hares. Do you believe a person can turn into a hare? If you don't, that was bad information.
People confessed to flying through the air on broomsticks. Do you believe a person can fly on a broomstick? If you don't, that was bad information.
People confessed to kissing the Devil's buttocks. Do you believe there is a physical Devil, with physical buttocks, who can be summoned for the pleasure of having them kissed by small gatherings of people? If you don't, that was bad information.
So here we have historical data on a widely applied torture program , which turned up very little that could even be arguably good information.
Torture doesn't get you information; it gets you whatever you stop the pain to listen to. Using less pain (if they really are) may mean that fewer people break. It doesn't mean you get correct information--because the whole point of doing it is that you don't know what the answer really is so you don't necessarily stop for correct information. And while you can try to keep secret from your victim what you really want to hear, in the hope that he'll spill the truth, not having anything more effective to offer, what you get is a situation in which a victim with any talent for Clever Hansing* will develop that talent to the full.
I will point out that we went to war in Iraq in part over an alleged nuclear weapons development program that turned out to be false. And guess what?--that bad information was gotten when the Egyptian government tortured some guy. Oops.
TV is fantasy. In the real world, torture doesn't work. Sure, sometimes your victim will tell the truth. But how are you going to tell that from all the times your victim made up fantasies to go five minutes more without being beaten again? A method that gives you the right answers part of the time, without any way to tell which part, might as well be the Mystic 8 Ball.
3) A lot of it is things like sleep deprivation and solitary confinement and simulated drowning, and stress positions, not really torture.
I've never had anyone deliberately try to keep me from sleeping for a week, or a month, so I can't speak from experience. The people who study torture class sleep deprivation as torture (unless they work for the Bush administration, but you can imagine how seriously I take that), so I do too.
And the books about Russian gulags had a little information on the process of psychological destruction that takes place in solitary confinement. Humans are social animals; deprive us of human contact and we go mad. Seriously, I'm talking paranoia and hallucinations and voices out of nowhere mad. It's not like putting a kid in time out, and I wish people wouldn't try to trivialize it like that.
Waterboarding is not simulated drowning. It's controlled drowning. The victim really is forced to inhale water--it's just done in such a way that you can do it again and again and again, instead of only once.
See the introduction about on favored "stress position" employed in the past.
4) They would do it to us.
Um. The fact that they do it makes them the bad guys. They are evil criminals because they do it. We shouldn't be evil criminals; we should be the good guys. Good guys don't torture. Why do I even have to explain this? What about this is naive?
5) People should be up in arms about terrorists using torture, not about our government using torture.
What on earth makes you think I have nothing against terrorists using torture? Terrorists are evil criminals in part because they torture. Of course I want the evil criminals caught and of course I despise what they do. But my own government is turning into evil criminals--naturally putting a stop to that is the first order of business.
So here are my objections to torture.
1) It's evil
2) it's evilness is compounded by the fact that it is frequently done to innocent people.
3) And it doesn't even work.
-----------------------------------------------
*Clever Hans was a horse that could "add." It turned out that what he was really doing was tapping his hoof until his trainer relaxed because he'd reached the right answer. I'm using "Clever Hansing" to mean "ramble until your torturer's body language says he's pleased, then expand on that subject"
If you want to check out an opposing point of view, there is one here. Or a point of view more aligned with mine is here. If you feel moved to comment on any of these, try to remember that though this issue stirs strong feelings, we might like to stay friends.
I think my first real introduction to torture was when I saw an old WWII movie on TV,. The fleeing good guys, one of whom was injured and being carried by the others, got caught by the Nazis, and when the good guys wouldn't answer questions, one of the Nazis deliberately struck the injured guy's broken leg with a rifle butt. I heard the injured guy catch his breath in pain and fled the room. I remember feeling helpless and sick.
I like to think it was just that I wanted to understand, but I went through a stage when I was fascinated by torture. I got every book I could find on it out of the library, and I read them all, with sick fascination, wanting to turn away but not quite able to put the books down. Most of them, naturally, were about the Inquisition--it being safely far back in history I guess, though I seem to recall there were some on Russian gulags too...
So I think I have something to say on the matter, having some idea of what "stress position" can mean, for instance (the Inquisition had this method of torture where they tied your hands behind your back and then strung you up from the ceiling by them, dislocating both shoulders. Then they left you to hang there for hours. That's an example of stress position.). So when someone says "stress position" it might be a good idea to get more information. Or not, if you have a delicate stomach.
1) Terrorists torture innocent people; we're only doing it to bad guys.
It would be nice to think that, wouldn't it? I'd like to believe that.
But, in Abu Ghraib, by the US Army's own estimate, somewhere between 50% and 90% of the inmates were innocent--had been picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those terrified bound guys, trying to cringe their dangling genitals away from snarling attack dogs? How do you know they all came from the 50% or 20% or 10% who were guilty? The Army didn't know who was guilty, or they'd have saved time and money by turning the innocent ones loose.
The Army almost certainly made mistakes then. So what makes you think that the Army, or the CIA, or whoever's doing the torturing this time, never makes a mistake?
Which means we're torturing innocent people too.
2) It gets us vital information that saves lives.
Well, we have an extensive long-running experiment on that, which gives us a lot of data to look at. The Inquisition. Let's see what kind of vital information torture gathered then:
People confessed to turning into cats. Do you believe a human being can turn into a cat? If you don't--that was bad information.
People confessed to turning into hares. Do you believe a person can turn into a hare? If you don't, that was bad information.
People confessed to flying through the air on broomsticks. Do you believe a person can fly on a broomstick? If you don't, that was bad information.
People confessed to kissing the Devil's buttocks. Do you believe there is a physical Devil, with physical buttocks, who can be summoned for the pleasure of having them kissed by small gatherings of people? If you don't, that was bad information.
So here we have historical data on a widely applied torture program , which turned up very little that could even be arguably good information.
Torture doesn't get you information; it gets you whatever you stop the pain to listen to. Using less pain (if they really are) may mean that fewer people break. It doesn't mean you get correct information--because the whole point of doing it is that you don't know what the answer really is so you don't necessarily stop for correct information. And while you can try to keep secret from your victim what you really want to hear, in the hope that he'll spill the truth, not having anything more effective to offer, what you get is a situation in which a victim with any talent for Clever Hansing* will develop that talent to the full.
I will point out that we went to war in Iraq in part over an alleged nuclear weapons development program that turned out to be false. And guess what?--that bad information was gotten when the Egyptian government tortured some guy. Oops.
TV is fantasy. In the real world, torture doesn't work. Sure, sometimes your victim will tell the truth. But how are you going to tell that from all the times your victim made up fantasies to go five minutes more without being beaten again? A method that gives you the right answers part of the time, without any way to tell which part, might as well be the Mystic 8 Ball.
3) A lot of it is things like sleep deprivation and solitary confinement and simulated drowning, and stress positions, not really torture.
I've never had anyone deliberately try to keep me from sleeping for a week, or a month, so I can't speak from experience. The people who study torture class sleep deprivation as torture (unless they work for the Bush administration, but you can imagine how seriously I take that), so I do too.
And the books about Russian gulags had a little information on the process of psychological destruction that takes place in solitary confinement. Humans are social animals; deprive us of human contact and we go mad. Seriously, I'm talking paranoia and hallucinations and voices out of nowhere mad. It's not like putting a kid in time out, and I wish people wouldn't try to trivialize it like that.
Waterboarding is not simulated drowning. It's controlled drowning. The victim really is forced to inhale water--it's just done in such a way that you can do it again and again and again, instead of only once.
See the introduction about on favored "stress position" employed in the past.
4) They would do it to us.
Um. The fact that they do it makes them the bad guys. They are evil criminals because they do it. We shouldn't be evil criminals; we should be the good guys. Good guys don't torture. Why do I even have to explain this? What about this is naive?
5) People should be up in arms about terrorists using torture, not about our government using torture.
What on earth makes you think I have nothing against terrorists using torture? Terrorists are evil criminals in part because they torture. Of course I want the evil criminals caught and of course I despise what they do. But my own government is turning into evil criminals--naturally putting a stop to that is the first order of business.
So here are my objections to torture.
1) It's evil
2) it's evilness is compounded by the fact that it is frequently done to innocent people.
3) And it doesn't even work.
-----------------------------------------------
*Clever Hans was a horse that could "add." It turned out that what he was really doing was tapping his hoof until his trainer relaxed because he'd reached the right answer. I'm using "Clever Hansing" to mean "ramble until your torturer's body language says he's pleased, then expand on that subject"
If you want to check out an opposing point of view, there is one here. Or a point of view more aligned with mine is here. If you feel moved to comment on any of these, try to remember that though this issue stirs strong feelings, we might like to stay friends.
