Whatever the psychological consequences, the release of the torture memos has opened a spirited debate among Americans, revealing yet again the ideological chasm that separates us. It isn’t just what others did to them that plagues their inner l lives, it’s also what they did to others. We see it in our returning warriors who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). How else is it possible to inflict unbearable pain on others, to listen to their screams, their pleas for mercy, if not to step outside the self we’ve known–the good son, father, husband, colleague, friend? We become, for that time, someone else, someone whose sadistic impulses are given free rein, and we don’t return to the self we knew without psychological consequences. For in dehumanizing another, we must inevitably dehumanize some part of our self. Ironically, the torturer doesn’t get off scot free. It’s what makes war and torture possible. What’s so interesting about it is how decent, civilized people can be moved to indecent, uncivilized behavior by the fear that enables them to dehumanize the other. But whether the few or the many, those who torture always have what they think is a good reason to do so. True, our government wasn’t targeting a whole people, just a few terrorists who may have had information that endangered our security and the lives of our people. If it didn’t count then, why should it count now? Yes, I know that we can’t compare the systematic torture that was the policy of the German government then with American CIA agents who tortured a few prisoners? But where do we draw the line? Is it okay to torture two but not ten, ten but not one hundred? Is waterboarding a prisoner once acceptable, but 183 times crossing the line?Īnd who should be held accountable? The torture memos make clear that the actions on the ground rested directly on the green light from the American government’s Justice Department. Wait a minute! Wasn’t the I-was-just-following-orders line the defense of the guards in the Nazi death camps when we tried and convicted them at Nuremberg? Now that we can no longer look away, what are we going to do about it? President Obama, who gave the okay to release the memos and promises that the United States will not torture again, says also that those whose behavior was within “the four corners” of what the Bush administration defined as legal doctrine will not be prosecuted. But seeing it in print, reading the carefully refined descriptions of what the administration and its lawyers said were legal ways of gathering information from its prisoners was a jolt that left lasting images in my brain: men standing naked as they were humiliated and beaten repeatedly, heads banged against the wall, lying in coffins with bugs crawling over them, hooded and tied upside down on a board while water is poured over their heads so they felt they were drowning. custody, many of them tortured to their death. We had, after all, already heard the testimony of Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, that more than one hundred detainees had died in U.S. IT WASN’T exactly a shock because, whether we wanted to or not, we really knew it had been happening for awhile.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |