Pardon Me While I Briefly Shift Tone

Many of you are going to hate me for saying this, but I just can't help myself: apart from two more lunches next month and a dinner gathering that may or may not happen, my academic duties are officially over until August. Yesterday I gave my last (of two) presentations to the other fellows and faculty, and it was a nice, informal discussion that actually got me pretty energized to finish this article I've been mulling over about when and why British troops/policemen shot at rioters in Victorian Ireland and India. Heady stuff, I know, but if rioting is my bread-and-butter (and it is), then excessive state violence is my raspberry preserves, and the flavor combination really gets my mouth watering. Even if it means I spend the next half-hour picking seeds out of my teeth.

Which is probably why I've been following the recent flood of torture revelations with such keen interest. I've long been aware of, and troubled by, what the Bushies did to detainees in all those secret prisons, black sites, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, etc., but I hadn't become thoroughly sickened until I read the first of Mark Danner's two articles in the New York Review of Books about a classified Red Cross report of interviews with prisoners held by the CIA at Guantanamo. It's a long article that makes for harrowing reading - details of prisoners forced to stand for extended periods with their hands shackled to the ceiling; prisoners stripped naked, kept in cold rooms, and periodically sprayed with cold water; prisoners kept in small boxes in which they could neither crouch nor stand for days and weeks on end; prisoners with towels wrapped around their necks and beaten repeatedly against walls; the infamous waterboarding - but I'd highly recommend reading it, and, if you've got time, read the second one, too.

Since Danner's articles came out, of course, there's been a flood of information coming from the Justice Department and the Senate, and lots of great reporting and analysis from the NY Times, etc., and I'm not sure how much I have to say on the topic that hasn't been said earlier and better by others. I will say, however, that I'm overjoyed that we're finally having this discussion in this country. For the last few days it's even pushed the economic news into second place, however briefly. Maybe it's asking too much of the American public, but if we could perhaps get up in arms about this issue in the same way that some folks recently got up in arms about the prospect of a 6% tax hike, then I'd say we had, indeed, turned a corner. I'll confess that I'm not just terribly optimistic about that, but it's nice to hope.

As Danner points out, the principal argument now - and Dick Cheney has been making this case quite loudly - will revolve around whether these tactics actually worked. Torture may be unseemly, runs the argument, but if it helps prevent Americans from another terrorist attack, then it's worth it. Cheney's been insisting that the CIA release all the "actionable intelligence" that was garnered from these harsh interrogations, and many Americans, weaned on the terror-porn of shows like 24, will undoubtedly be willing to believe any scrap of evidence showing that something a tortured prisoner said may have prevented some future attack. Never mind that study after study (as well as this guy, formerly of the FBI) has shown that torture doesn't work - or that common sense alone will tell you that a tortured prisoner will likely say anything to make the pain stop, and his/her information will therefore be highly suspect, at best. And never mind that what went on at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and the black sites did more to foster anti-American sentiment worldwide, and thereby to make future attacks more likely, than almost anything else we could have done. For some Americans, the ticking-time-bomb scenario, in which the interrogator knows that the prisoner knows where the bomb is, and has no choice but to keep turning the screws until he tells the truth, is just too appealing. It's also a handy way of avoiding looking ourselves in the mirror, of preserving the good-guy / bad-guy story that we like to tell ourselves about war, law enforcement, and our national character. If we torture, it's for some greater good, like preventing the deaths of thousands of people. If our enemies torture, it's because they're depraved and sadistic. The idea that we might be just as morally compromised as the people we're torturing (and I won't deny that many of the detainees were quite nasty guys) is one that most Americans will only accept with reluctance, if at all.

And so I expect the debate will continue along these lines, with one side upholding abstract principles of justice and morality and the other insisting on a brutal pragmatism along the lines of the Marines' fabled motto, "Kill 'Em All and Let God Sort 'Em Out." The rule of law vs. the utilitarian, the sheriff vs. the outlaw, the rule-bound police commissioner vs. Dirty Harry: thus has it ever been in this country, and thus will it continue to be.

What's happening now is that something we all knew (the fact that the US tortured prisoners isn't exactly news) but preferred not to think about is suddenly being hauled out into the light of day. Torture, apparently, is okay as long as we don't have to see it happening, but once we're forced to confront it in all its ugliness, will we still want our government to do it? I'm afraid that over time the answer will turn out to be yes. After all, we've been through all this before: it was five years ago that the Abu Ghraib story broke, and, despite an initial flurry of handwringing, things eventually settled down, the folks who did the torturing were effectively defined as "bad apples" and duly punished, and their superiors kept their jobs. Now most of those officials are no longer in power, a new administration is reluctantly but effectively coming to grips with our past misdeeds, and the national mood (if there even is such a thing) has shifted. We're not as fearful as we used to be of a terrorist attack - thank you, media, for helping to redirect our fears toward the stock market instead! - and we're not as likely to give the Bush administration a free pass as we once were. But I'm still not optimistic.

In my ideal world, the whole lot of them - Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, Rice, the lawyers who gave the torturers legal cover, the CIA agents who did the torturing (even if they were reluctantly "just following orders") - would be thrown in jail. It would be a very comfortable jail with lots of televisions and cushy chairs and vegetarian options. There would be ping-pong tables, pilates lessons, picnic tables, and a puppy room. And once a week, for only an hour or so, they would be forced, not to feel like they themselves were drowning, to but to watch a videotape of someone being made to feel like he is drowning. Then they would be sent back to the puppy room to think about what they've done. The bastards.