On the underpinnings of torture
Dec. 14th, 2006 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI’ve spent a lot of time and space here talking about the mechanics of torture, why it doesn’t really work; the ways in which it fails to be a useful tool in collecting information, and how it degrades those who use it.
I’ve not spoken as to what it means/says about those who support it. The recent deaths of Pinochet and Kirkpatrick gave me pause to think about some of that, and it speaks to part of my visceral reaction to it, as a policy, apart from the revulsion the actual practice evokes.
Those who support torture seem to be, objectively, anti-democratic. It was a quotation of Kirkpatrick’s which put those pieces together. Before this I was looking at it as a manifestation of helplessness, hopelessness, and projected fear (after all, they reason, if someone were using an old-fashioned washing-machine mangle to pulp their fingers, they would give up the information, so the “terrorists” will do the same).
They get lots of play. That small number gets held up to counterbalance the vast majority who say it doesn’t. Just as the Holocaust deniers hold up their half-dozen, and say that counterbalances the rest of the evidence, so to the torture-supporters "refute" the testimony of hundreds of years, from the Romans, to the Inquisition, to the Luftwaffe, to the present.
And those who want to believe; who cling to the simple template of black and white, the Manichean worldview of good vs. evil (with their side as the Good Guys) clutch at it, they cradle the few who coddle their view to their bosoms and pretend they counterbalance the weight of evidence to the contrary. They clutch at straws. They look to anyone who will corroborate their theory.
Just as there are historians who will say the Holocaust didn’t happen; or architects who will say gas-chambers can’t have been built, there are those, in interrogation, who will argue that torture works. The preach the fallacy of the false middle, just as Creationists who say “evolution is debated” and other such things where an extreme is presented as counterpoise to the weight of evidence, and we are told the “real” truth is somewhere between the two. If I say 2+2=4, and someone else says 2+2=6, the answer isn’t that 2+2=5.
But I digress. There is more to it. The people who believe in torture fall into several camps. First are the deluded (either self, or by those who use the dishonest tactics of the false middle) or those who think it a useful tool. Those who think it a useful tool, aren't really interested in getting information.
To get back to Pinochet and Kirkpatrick.
Both [Pinochet, and the Shah of Iran] did tolerate limited opposition, including opposition newspapers and political parties, but both were also confronted by radical, violent opponents bent on social and political revolution. Both rulers, therefore, sometimes invoked martial law to arrest, imprison, exile, and occasionally, it was alleged, torture their opponents. Both relied for public order on police forces whose personnel were said to be too harsh, too arbitrary, and too powerful. (Kirkpatrick, Commentary: 1979 Dictatorships and Double Standards)
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, there is a wealth of evil in that therefore (and more in the weasel words of "occasionally" and "alleged"). It posits there are acceptable, and not so acceptable, levels of, peaceful, i.e. merely verbal, opposition. If those lines are crossed, (lets say it seems the opposition might actually get elected, and change things) then it’s not only acceptable, but even needful, to engage in repressions, martial law, abrogation of civil rights, disappearances, even torture and summary execution, no matter that no violence was offered, nor even advocated.
Why? Because the free exercise of democracy is somehow, counter-democratic. But, goes Kirkpatrick’s argument, the anti-democratic practices of people like Pinochet, the Shah are the best way to foster “real” democracy. What’s funny is that, under the Kirkpatrick way of seeing the world, Saddam Hussein falls in the “fostering democracy” model of ruler.
Where am I going with this? Those who agree with torture, agree with Kirkpatrick, they think people having civil rights, engaging in the free exchange of ideas, ought to be suppressed, in the public good (if you doubt the latter, head over to Instapundit, and follow the links he so, without any express, or implied agreement” {never mind that he seems to only link to one side of the aisle} so abundantly provides. Places like LGF, however, are not for the faint of heart.).
Democracy, esp. one like ours, where we entrust our votes to those who will stand for us; with faith they will represent our collective interest, is difficult. We don’t have the direct democracy of small towns in New Hampshire, where all get to weigh in on the issues, and no one stands for anyone else, leading those who wish to be active the full scope of politics, and those who don’t care, the right to ignore it; and the chips fall as they may.
Nor yet that of Athens, where only a small number were allowed to vote, but all had to abide, we choose a middle ground. Ours is the middle ground of those. More difficult, because we have to trust people we don’t know, but it relies on the free and open exchange of ideas. Those, in turn, rely on the people’s faith that they can speak freely.
Those who believe in torture don’t believe people should have those rights. They accept the therefore, that some things mean governments are entitled to defend themselves from the free expression of ideas. That assembling for protest, petitioning for redress of grievance, pointing out the criminal actions of those in power, cronyism, abuses of power are all things a government, so long as it lets most people go along, without too much interference.
It may start small, but it’s not likely to stay that way. Just as the guy who knows about the ticking bomb gets further and further from the actual bomb, until anyone who is detained might know enough to get to the first link in the chain, so to the offenses against “good order” grow.
It’s the weakness in the “broken window” theory of policing. When the bigger crimes are done away with, the people demand, and the police department needs, to go after the next level, until the merest act of loitering is treated as harshly as murder.
A long time ago, we had a different therefore,
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I think those are better securities than the present suggestions, being suggested to replace them.
I’ve not spoken as to what it means/says about those who support it. The recent deaths of Pinochet and Kirkpatrick gave me pause to think about some of that, and it speaks to part of my visceral reaction to it, as a policy, apart from the revulsion the actual practice evokes.
Those who support torture seem to be, objectively, anti-democratic. It was a quotation of Kirkpatrick’s which put those pieces together. Before this I was looking at it as a manifestation of helplessness, hopelessness, and projected fear (after all, they reason, if someone were using an old-fashioned washing-machine mangle to pulp their fingers, they would give up the information, so the “terrorists” will do the same).
They get lots of play. That small number gets held up to counterbalance the vast majority who say it doesn’t. Just as the Holocaust deniers hold up their half-dozen, and say that counterbalances the rest of the evidence, so to the torture-supporters "refute" the testimony of hundreds of years, from the Romans, to the Inquisition, to the Luftwaffe, to the present.
And those who want to believe; who cling to the simple template of black and white, the Manichean worldview of good vs. evil (with their side as the Good Guys) clutch at it, they cradle the few who coddle their view to their bosoms and pretend they counterbalance the weight of evidence to the contrary. They clutch at straws. They look to anyone who will corroborate their theory.
Just as there are historians who will say the Holocaust didn’t happen; or architects who will say gas-chambers can’t have been built, there are those, in interrogation, who will argue that torture works. The preach the fallacy of the false middle, just as Creationists who say “evolution is debated” and other such things where an extreme is presented as counterpoise to the weight of evidence, and we are told the “real” truth is somewhere between the two. If I say 2+2=4, and someone else says 2+2=6, the answer isn’t that 2+2=5.
But I digress. There is more to it. The people who believe in torture fall into several camps. First are the deluded (either self, or by those who use the dishonest tactics of the false middle) or those who think it a useful tool. Those who think it a useful tool, aren't really interested in getting information.
To get back to Pinochet and Kirkpatrick.
Both [Pinochet, and the Shah of Iran] did tolerate limited opposition, including opposition newspapers and political parties, but both were also confronted by radical, violent opponents bent on social and political revolution. Both rulers, therefore, sometimes invoked martial law to arrest, imprison, exile, and occasionally, it was alleged, torture their opponents. Both relied for public order on police forces whose personnel were said to be too harsh, too arbitrary, and too powerful. (Kirkpatrick, Commentary: 1979 Dictatorships and Double Standards)
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, there is a wealth of evil in that therefore (and more in the weasel words of "occasionally" and "alleged"). It posits there are acceptable, and not so acceptable, levels of, peaceful, i.e. merely verbal, opposition. If those lines are crossed, (lets say it seems the opposition might actually get elected, and change things) then it’s not only acceptable, but even needful, to engage in repressions, martial law, abrogation of civil rights, disappearances, even torture and summary execution, no matter that no violence was offered, nor even advocated.
Why? Because the free exercise of democracy is somehow, counter-democratic. But, goes Kirkpatrick’s argument, the anti-democratic practices of people like Pinochet, the Shah are the best way to foster “real” democracy. What’s funny is that, under the Kirkpatrick way of seeing the world, Saddam Hussein falls in the “fostering democracy” model of ruler.
Where am I going with this? Those who agree with torture, agree with Kirkpatrick, they think people having civil rights, engaging in the free exchange of ideas, ought to be suppressed, in the public good (if you doubt the latter, head over to Instapundit, and follow the links he so, without any express, or implied agreement” {never mind that he seems to only link to one side of the aisle} so abundantly provides. Places like LGF, however, are not for the faint of heart.).
Democracy, esp. one like ours, where we entrust our votes to those who will stand for us; with faith they will represent our collective interest, is difficult. We don’t have the direct democracy of small towns in New Hampshire, where all get to weigh in on the issues, and no one stands for anyone else, leading those who wish to be active the full scope of politics, and those who don’t care, the right to ignore it; and the chips fall as they may.
Nor yet that of Athens, where only a small number were allowed to vote, but all had to abide, we choose a middle ground. Ours is the middle ground of those. More difficult, because we have to trust people we don’t know, but it relies on the free and open exchange of ideas. Those, in turn, rely on the people’s faith that they can speak freely.
Those who believe in torture don’t believe people should have those rights. They accept the therefore, that some things mean governments are entitled to defend themselves from the free expression of ideas. That assembling for protest, petitioning for redress of grievance, pointing out the criminal actions of those in power, cronyism, abuses of power are all things a government, so long as it lets most people go along, without too much interference.
It may start small, but it’s not likely to stay that way. Just as the guy who knows about the ticking bomb gets further and further from the actual bomb, until anyone who is detained might know enough to get to the first link in the chain, so to the offenses against “good order” grow.
It’s the weakness in the “broken window” theory of policing. When the bigger crimes are done away with, the people demand, and the police department needs, to go after the next level, until the merest act of loitering is treated as harshly as murder.
A long time ago, we had a different therefore,
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I think those are better securities than the present suggestions, being suggested to replace them.
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Applause
Date: 2006-12-15 10:37 am (UTC)(well, the food and martial arts posts too, but they're icing)
It's just a pity that the people who should read this won't and, even if they did, wouldn't hear what you said.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 11:16 pm (UTC)You may have commented elsewhere on this - I've only recently begun to come here, so forgive me if I go over old ground - but there seems to me to be a powerfully sexual element in the urge to torture, which has nothing to do with any potential end product of 'intelligence'. It has many equivalences with rape, although whether rape is a sexual act rather than a thinly disguised exercise of power is debatable. Is giving dickless wonders their jollies any way to run a railroad?
The essence of torture appears, to be, to be the thesis 'I can, therefore I shall', whereas at the heart of our civilization is the agreement by those with (probably transient) power to say 'I can, but I shall not, because if I do I destroy that which I seek to protect'.
Of course, it is a lot more complex than thus, even if the root of it all is that torture is wrong, and in our civilization you don't do it.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 11:48 pm (UTC)As Graydon says, being a top-primate means being able to take what you want, hit whom you want, and fuck whom you want.
The last two, being directly done to people can become aspects of power relationships.
Because torture is about power, there is a bleed-over (or can be, I don't doubt that there are those who can treat it as just a job, I don't care to know them; at least not if they are working in that field, outside of consensual relations, which changes the entire dynamic, and so doesn't apply).
The inferior in question is the person who is powerless. Torture is bullying, writ large. There may be social pressures which tend to one group, being singled out for primary selection as the victim, but anyone who is unable to resist/strike back, is fair game.
It's part of why the rabid right is so fond of eliminationist rhetoric... it automatically defines the opposition as being powerless. When Ann Coulter tells people to hit liberals with baseball bats, she is saying they are powerless to resist (because we are weak, "girly-men" at heart).
There comes a time when those who are being the victims of campaigns to objectify them as torturable have to stand up and respond. It's more effective if it's done quickly.
Which is part of why the, inept, policy of the Dems to "go along to get along" with the people presently running the Republican Party were/are to toxic to getting things done. Every concession is seen as moving the line. It's not seen as, "we think this a reasonable compromise; this time," but rather, "here's the new point from which to push them back next time."
When they actually stand in opposition, e.g. Social Security, and don't provide cover (because lots of the thing the Republicans are trying to do aren't well received, look at abortion in S.D.) they win, and handsomely.
Not only does it restrain the Republicans, but it reminds the populace that there are things which matter.
Which is why they should have filibustered Alito, and voted, en bloc, against the MCA; because those would have been (even if they lost) visible stands on principle. And it's better to lose on principle, than to "win" by voting against principle.
But I digress.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 09:06 am (UTC)Thanks for speaking the truth.