Last week, a man whose intelligence & depth of world experience I greatly admire said that while torture has always seemed unquestionably beyond the pale, now he thinks differently. As he explained it, if his home, his loved ones are threatened, then he it is sometimes morally acceptable to use any means possible to protect him. Including
Excuse me, but torture being sometimes okay strikes me as being a little bit pregnant. It is or it isn't.
Personally, I was raised - by my teachers, faith & family - to believe that torture is never acceptable. As an adult fast approaching the big 6-5, I am stunned at the reversal in how Americans regard waterboarding & even more horrific forms of torture by our intelligence agencies. It's more than the impact of 9/11. It was a shock, but there is more here. Maybe it is a coarsening of the American spirit.
Things that once would have horrified us now roll over like rain drops over an unbrella. The architects of an utterly unjustified war, people who misrepresented & lied & fed our country fear like a babysitter bribing children with candy weren't held responsible - Dick Cheney, the darling of Sunday talk shows, makes it clear he'd do it all over again, that even if there was 1% chance that someone had vital information, it was our duty to take whatever means possible to get it out of him. If it turned out the man was innocent, he's collateral damage in a just safeguarding of freedom & liberty.
Freedom & liberty. Do we even remember what those words mean? Or, as some people now claim, that they are AMERICAN values & virtues, ours & ours alone.
If it is okay for my government to take whatever means necessary to protect our shores & people, then it is okay for anyone to do the same. The men who brought down the Twin Towers, who slammed into the Pentagon, who ended up in a Pennsylvania field instead of the White House or Capitol, didn't do it simply because we are infidels & need to be wiped off the face of the earth. Have we, as a country, stepped back to consider what it was about US - rather than other Christian countries - that so deeply stirred their anger & hatred? Much easier to react from the heat of emotion than to respond with at least a suggestion of wisdom.
American torture program - to this child of the '60s, that seems the ultimate oxymoron. It's the OTHER guys who torture, not us. Never us.
To me, it's pretty simple & straightforward - the use of torture is okay for everyone or no one. If that's the new consensus in America - and it seems to be, since the only person who's been held accountable for our use is the whistleblower who brought it to light - then we need to admit that we no longer hold by the Geneva Conventions* (unthinkable in my youth) & that using torture is fair game for any & all. What we can't do is say that torture is okay sometimes, under some situations & circumstances.
Our American character is changing in astonishing ways. State laws make it increasingly difficult for the old, the poor, the urban, the student to vote. That's not opinion, that's fact. Corporations share the same rights as an American citizen, without any responsibilities; they relocate headquarters overseas to avoid US tax laws without loss of perks & tax breaks back home. The new Congress will include more legislators who feel deeply about passing personhood laws. We are back peddling to pre-Griswold v. Connecticut, with contraceptives being demonized as another form of abortion. Creationists, climate change deniers & advocates, union busters, weakening of Wall Street regulations, a growing divide between classes & races, "stand your ground" laws & militarizing our police, a culture that seems to make our personal worlds smaller & more frightening. These are our DAILY challenges.
Reread that last paragraph. Is it any wonder that so many just don't care about torture? They are worn out - emotionally, morally, ethically. Over six years ago, Barack Obama made his fool-hardy comment about how hard-pressed rural folks cling to their guns & religion. But he actually said more - "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a ways to explain their frustrations.
ANTIPATHY - noun, a deep-seated feeling of dislike; aversion. synonyms include hostility, antagonism, animosity, aversion, animus, enmity, dislike, distaste, hatred, hate, abhorrence, loathing.
I'd say that one word is about as simple & straightforward as it gets in describing of the sense what seems to be gripping our nation at this incredible point in time. And THAT is scary, because power brokers of every sort love moments like this, when they can so easily turn people against each other. Or, when it comes to torture, against our better self.
* For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.
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