More Torture

Last week, one item that contributed to my fit of angst (along with Joe's reminder of our doomsday collison course with melting glaciers) was the morning's offering from Democracy Now! on the Australian documentary showing the new torture photos and video footage. DN! ran some of those shots, and then interviewed Dr. Alfred McCoy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who has written extensively on the CIA (his first book was The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade). He has recently written a new book on CIA activities entitled A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror. It documents the drift of physical torture to the brand of psyops we've come to recognize on our screens. What may appear to be physical torture in those photos is really not, he contends. The sensory deprivation, the short shackles, the sexual humiliation, and self-inflicted pain, all these are psychological in nature, and they are the torture of choice in the field these days. Dr. McCoy outlined how the research was developed, and how the US was extremely careful in ratifying the Anti-Torture agreement with the UN, crafted by Reagan but unchanged by Clinton.

Consider the fact that Senator McCain himself admitted he had rather suffer physical than psychological torture, and the additional fact that psychological damage is most often irreversible. Even if we lose limbs or bones from physical assault, we can commandeer our own recovery. Take away the mind, and we are not only unable to heal ourselves, we are no longer worth anything to anyone, including our torturers. This may be why the Pentagon is adamantly resistant to releasing the bulk of its detainees; they are so damaged, and so many, that releasing them would further expose the results of their cruelty to the world.

What astonishes me in all this insanity, both in the perpetrators and the perpetration, is that the techniques utilized for these horrifying ends were discovered in psychological studies. There are professionals out there, trained and credentialed clinicians and academics, who participated in the development of the underlying principles that guide these atrocities. Even more astonishing is that the American Psychological Association released a few months ago a report from the task force on these issues, and it did not offer the full and blanket condemnation of torture techniques as the AMA has done in this country and in the UK (though there is some disagreement about these distinctions, some noting that no individual professional has ever been reported by name, to which I respond that the Bush administration on this issue particularly has made such identifications most unwelcome). For a bizarre debate on this point, watch another offering from Democracy Now! here.

This month's print version of Harper's includes a short piece on torture by David Luban, who points out that our liberal rejection of cruelty is quite new and unusual in the history of human mistreatment of fellow humans. Why this seems so obvious a necessity for human behavior to me, I cannot explain. Perhaps it has something to do with my early Christian training to "do unto others...." Nor can I explain why reasonable and professional men and women would allow themselves to excuse and justify such treatment of others. Perhaps that has something to do with my advanced training in reasoning and professional ethics.

But there it is.

dr. elsewhere

UPDATE: In my rush to get out of the seacyber cafe as it was closing, I forgot to include this very important development, as well. A rather key Republican appointee and Navy officer has come forward with his story of how his questions regarding interrogation policy were essentially ignored by the decision-makers, compromising values for "flexibility." I'll revisit this problem of compromising values again soon. Meanwhile, how many of you out there dutifully acknowledge every little ethical compromise you make each day? Remember, it's tax time. And how many of you remember Jeff Goldblum's challenge to Willliam Hurt in The Big Chill? The one where he insists, as Hurt dodges the video camera and the discussion, that rationalizations are more important than sex. Goldblum's punchline argument is simple: Ever go a whole day without a rationalization?