Speaking of Horror Movies, a Few Words on Torture

The right-wing talk radio psychotics and smegma-molds over at Fox News have added another offense to Obama's long laundry list of crimes against rich white America: he hates torture! My god, how will the children be safe with a president who doesn't condone state-sponsored torment of any turban-wearing "radical" who's caught jaywalking in Baghdad? How can good honest Americans go to bed at night with the knowledge that future detainees will be pampered and spoiled with luxuries like clothes and habeas corpus? And what about all the terrorist attacks that our government could have thwarted had they only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 200-300 more times for good measure?

Before getting too deep into the pernicious idiocy of these claims, here's a brief timeline of the events leading up to the Right's most recent collective temper tantrum:

April 16 - Obama releases four "torture memos" drafted by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel back in 2002 and 2005 that provided legal justification for the harsh CIA interrogation techniques used on detainees under the Bush administration. The president states that the CIA officials who carried out the harsh interrogations will not prosecuted.

April 19 - In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says that Obama believes that the individuals who devised the torture policy itself should not be prosecuted either.

April 21 - After getting a lot of heat from Human Rights organizations, Muslims from around the world, and Senate democrats like Russ Feingold and Dianne Feinstein, Obama says that he is open to prosecution of the individuals who formulated those legal decisions but that it would be up to Congress and the Attorney General to conduct the investigation. Conservative America proceeds to blow up in a vile and embarassing display of bloated outrage.

Conservatives are angry because they think Obama has "given in" to the demands of ultra-radical Left-Wingers with a political vendetta against the Bush administration. Moreover, they claim that the individuals now in danger of prosecution were the very same individuals doing God's work to protect America from terrorism. This disingenuous "no good deed goes unpunished" defense is based on two untenable fallacies:

1. These "harsh interrogation techniques" made the country safer

2. The techniques themselves do not constitute torture

Regarding the first argument, the interrogation techniques have actually had the opposite effect on our safety. For example, say you live in a politically volatile country and your leader has just been ousted by an occupying nation with ostensibly good intentions. Although you might not be crazy about your occupiers, you figure it can't get any worse than the last regime. Then one day, a casual acquaintance or rival who is struggling financially like yourself tells the local authorities that you are a part of a radical terrorist cell so he can receive a modest cash reward for the tip. Suddenly you're taken from your home in the middle of the night and locked away in a prison where you are subjected to unbearable pain and humiliation for information you do not have by the people who are supposed to "liberate" you. When (or I should say "if") you ever make it out, you might start to think those anti-American insurgents have a point. Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo? These are essentially recruitment facilities for future terrorists.

(Oh, and I almost forgot: even when a prisoner has potentially valuable information, torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence anyway so pretty much everybody loses.)

But even if we're to believe Michael Mukasey and Jack Bauer when they list the myriad benefits of "aggressive interrogation tactics" it's important to note just how euphemistic the phrase "aggressive interrogation tactics" really is. This brings us to the second flawed piece of rationale used to justify the crimes of the Bush administration which is that these techniques aren't really torture in the first place. When defending the rough treatment of detainees, torture-proponents downplay the cumulative effect of these techniques by listing only one or two of the tactics at a time. For example, it's debatable whether or not we'd call it torture to put someone's hand in a box containing a daddy long-legs while telling the detainee that the box contains a black widow. But employing the box trick on someone who has been standing for over 100 hours naked in a cold, pitch-black room with guards incessantly threatening death, slapping the person in the face, and throwing them against walls is a different story. Any kind of "interrogation" for 100 hours straight would be torturous, but it's especially inhumane when the ordeal involves sick and ridiculous rituals like these.

Going back to the release of the "torture memos" and the prospect of prosecution, I think Obama is right to avoid bringing criminal charges against the individual interrogators. These men were following orders. I'm sure many of them are already traumatized enough by their war-time experiences and the last thing they need is for their country to throw them in prison as gratitude for their service. And as easy as it is to direct our ire at the insidious Justice Department lawyers who snaked their way around the Geneva Convention to draft the memos, we shouldn't forget the people at the heart of the clusterfuck, Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez, who requested the reports in the first place. After all, when a person is convicted of murder, the judge doesn't throw the defense attorney in jail and let the killer go free. And if Obama does not create an environment that allows Congress and the Justice Department to conduct a fair and thorough investigation of potential war crimes under the Bush administration, he may quickly lose the precarious sense of faith and trust he's instilled in our fellow free nations.