As a follow-on from kiaa's post of 13/05

[johnny9fingers]

talkpolitics.dreamwidth.org/1992147.html#comments

Kiaa's post raised some points about torture; and I must admit that I've put the cart before the horse. My original thesis in this discussion was that the idea of torture had been normalised first, and then we had allowed ourselves to torture people. A bit like the Mafioso hit-man going to confession for the sins he is about to commit.

However, in light of this information:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/44031774

which cited a Reuters report from 2016:

www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-torture-exclusive-idUSKCN0WW0Y3

I think it is now obvious that torture was first approved by the Bush administration under Cheney, and post-hoc the normalisation of torture was attempted (successfully) through the usual media channels.

The notion that three-quarters of Americans approve of torture whilst claiming to be Christians of one kind or another is one of those particularly delicious ironies. But what is also interesting is I haven't read any real substantial defence of torture from any intellectual right-wing pundits. Which leads me to speculate that the toleration of torture, even more than the toleration of racism, is a private belief but a public shame.

Brexit has apparently allowed some English folk to express a withheld and buried racism. Trump has enabled some American folk to do similar.
When our polities not only allow but encourage our worst traits and excesses, we ought to heed the omens.

But does the panel have any possible arguments in favour of torture? Whether you believe in those arguments or not?

I can start with one: in some circumstances it might just work?

Comments

[abomvubuso]

For me, the primary objection against the use of torture, even if it works (and that's debatable), is that it erodes the moral credibility of supposedly civilized, free societies who like to promote themselves as some sort of paragons of moral virtue. You can't claim to be a defender of freedom and humanity, and at the same time go around and violate the very principles of humanity with impunity. People tend to get disgusted by the discrepancy, eventually. And the long-term consequences are bigger than some might expect.

[johnny9fingers]

I think the occasions where torture actually provides good information are few and far between. And editing the noise generated by torture, actually determining what is true or not, is also difficult.

I'd guess it would be hard to distinguish between those circumstances where torture has worked or not; but that's athwart the point.

You see, the fact that it might work once in a blue moon is the best argument I can come up with pro torture; and I know a multiplicity of arguments much better from as many different standpoints: moral, practical, situational, ethical, and political; all of which line up against torture. And yet still we torture, or reward torturers, or turn a blind eye.

And three-quarters of Americans don't mind too much actually. So I'd guess that percentage would be mirrored in some parts of the UK, or if not three quarters, maybe half of us. (I'd wish we were better, but I'm not holding out much hope.)

It doesn't reflect well on us.

[jazzyjj]

Very well said. I can't think of *any* credible reason for torture. This includes police brutality, which Chicago has seen a lot of over the years.

[abomvubuso]

They don't mind because it's happening far away, to people they don't relate to. The dehumanization of other people is a long story, and many factors are contributing to it.

[johnny9fingers]

I feel as post-human as the next educated person living on the cusp of augmentation while knowing he will be too old to benefit. But that doesn’t mean I can accept the dehumanising aspects of our polities without protesting.

To say that torture is evil and not that useful doesn’t seem to affect a whole lot of folk in the US, most of whom are apparent experts on evil (given the number and regularity of pulpit denouncements recycled across social media) and therefore feel perfectly at liberty to ignore other people’s judgements.

[peristaltor]

To say that torture is evil and not that useful doesn’t seem to affect a whole lot of folk in the US…

Wait, which? Evil has no place in realpolitic; efficacy, on the other hand, really really really does. And torture does not work, not in any way. Quick rule of thumb: if Israel does it, it probably works. Israel hasn't used torture (as a means of obtaining information, as opposed to just jollies) for years.

As to our media landscape, remember how very fractured and devastated it has been in, oh, the last 40 years. For every filter bubble, you have a media diet. For every profitable outlook, you find at least ten servings of diet.

And as a wedge issue, there's gold in denying torture as bad.

[halialkers]

People literally bent over backwards to defend the USSR's claims and claim any evidence it was a slave society mandated to rely on torture and execution as a mechanism of policy were capitalist running dogs. So why wouldn't 21st Century people be able to make or use similar claims here?

Torture is an obscenity but the willingness to condemn it is far from the even virtue it always should have been.

And it's never worked and was never really intended to, I think. It's cruelty given official sanction as a tool, nothing more and nothing less.

[nairiporter]

On your obvious point, "enhanced interrogation" has a history long preceding the War on Terror. What a short public memory we have. :/ Just as the more obvious examples that should remain in our living memory, look to the 60s and 80s.

[johnny9fingers]

True.

Each time we think we’ve put such behaviour behind us, we step back into it.

I guess that means eternal vigilance. It really does turn Johnny into a dull chap. It’s a bit of a bore this eternal vigilance routine, but needs must.

[halialkers]

And to the degree to which merely pointing out that the USSR of Comrade Stalin wasn't the paradise it said it was was demonized as worse than the USSR's actual crimes for as long as it was.

The people who screamed that the USSR could never have shot those Poles at Katyn or used mass execution and torture as a default are many of the same ones who now feign to object to US use of the same methods. Why is capitalist torture evil and Communist versions good?

Torture is evil at all times, in all occasions. Selective condemnation of it, well....

[johnny9fingers]

Why is capitalist torture evil and Communist versions good?

For the same reason Communist torture is evil and Capitalist torture good. Perspective, partisanship, and politics.

It's why Fascism and Communism appear to be the worst expression possible of the respective ideas. And the ideas are hugely flawed to start with, though Marx and Engels at least have some relationship with scholarship.

Torture is always evil; with this I agree. So how come some folk don't get this?

[oportet]

I think the phrase 'enhanced interrogation' has softened people up to the idea.

And 'Waterboarding'... I'm not saying it isn't awful, but it doesn't sound awful. 'Drowning' or 'almost drowning', while maybe not technically correct descriptions - would at least make everyone chiming in reflect more on their stance (if we want that in the first place).

Arguments in favor? I suppose the popular, hypothetical 'guy planted a bomb and won't tell us where it is' situation. Even if it hasn't happened - just the possibility is enough for some people to approve, or even slightly disapprove but not raise a fuss about.

[johnny9fingers]

Ah waterboarding...

As underlankers has mentioned, we executed Japanese war criminals on the basis of waterboarding, and a few decades later approved it for use on suspected terrorists pre-trial.

Funny old world.

[airiefairie]

He is Halialkers now. =)

[johnny9fingers]

Thanks. Senior moment...

[halialkers]

And now we quite clearly owe the families of those people we executed for that reparations for wrongful death.

[johnny9fingers]

I know.

This is our shame. Ours as much as yours as we were complicit here too.

I think the phrase is "Pretty Fucking Disgraceful".

[halialkers]

Just to be clear: By this logic medieval Christianity, which was entirely fine with torture as a baseline of justice, wasn't Christian.

So.....did Christianity ever exist or is true Christianity a convenient strawman to avoid dealing with the ugly underbelly of Western civilization?

The Church didn't damn the torture chamber, the Enlightenment, which was by no means Christian, did.

[johnny9fingers]

Mediæval Christianity was so many things. From randy monks, to a multiplicity of popes, to insane Anabaptists. And in hindsight little of it was other than nominatively Christian outside perhaps of the strict rule of St Benedict. Whereas we sometimes forget that everything in mediæval life was about religion and belief, and the personal and national taxonomies of religion. When these can get a person burnt at the stake for differences in how they observe a rite to the same messiah that the person doing the burning believes in - one who preached mercy and forgiveness - it's a special sort of historical period.

Mind you there are some churches around now that don't seem too Christian.

And you're right about the Enlightenment and the dissemination of "Masonic" and Whiggish ideas and ideals. The church had to catch up. However there have been a few definitive statements about torture from both the Catholic and Episcopalian churches, and various inter-Christian ecumenical bodies, in the last two centuries.

I think true Christianity is like true Communism or human civilisation. They might be good ideas if they ever happen for more than a week at a time.