Those who sacrifice Liberty for Security deserve Neither
Today I am thankful.
I am thankful that I have never been indentified as a terrorist suspect. I am thankful I have never fallen foul of people who think torture is a worthwhile way of extracting information from anyone. And I am truly thankful that I live in a country where Amnesty International can run a campaign against torture.
Amnesty's campaign is called Unsubscribe Now. I cannot embed the extremely powerful video, the first in a planned series showing how torture is used, and how it dehumanises both those who are tortured and those who torture. All I can do is provide the link and ask that you go, watch the video, and make your own mind up.
The man in the video is an actor. He was paid to suffer the treatment meted out to others. He suffered for six hours. Others suffer much longer, and without the knowledge that they can go home for supper after the day's filming is over.
I believe torture should never, ever be used. Against anyone. For any reason.
Happy Thanksgiving?
Not for everyone, that's for sure.
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Comments
It's a powerful video... but I kinda wish there was a bit of context. What's keeping him from falling off the boxes? A beating? The thought that he might be really high up?
Couldn't they throw in a bit more white text explaining what's going on? What the technique is and what the actor is going through?
I just have many objections to treating human beings like this: the methods have been proved to be ineffective at obtaining information that is accurate and mainly serve to increase hatred.
Not a good thing.
There are too many people in America who don't know or understand history. They do not understand the principles behind the rights and freedoms they are freely giving away. The Amendment to the United States Constitution Reads:
This is in the fundamental basic laws that America's founding fathers layed down when they fled Tyrannical Empirical Rule. They were the first people to ever define their government's responsibility to the people. And now there are so many who in ignorance and who have been swayed by propoganda sewn by the media believe that it is now in their own best interests to have those rights removed one by one.
Fight to keep the principles your ancestors fought to achieve in the first place.
So it should be tossed then? Don't need civil liberties or freedoms or standards of behavior? A nuclear isotope can be spotted with 20 year-old technology from space... we have psychoanalists that can analize from a person's signature how many times he was slapped as a child, and you're telling me that we should be throwing 200 years worth of civil liberties that AMERICAN'S DIED TO EARN AND PROTECT in favor of some barbaric interrogation techniques?
For me the choice is simple. I choose life, liberty and the pursuit of happyness as my rights. Security is an illusion propogated by a government who is all too happy that you're buying into it. Because the more you do, the more they can control you.
We used it in Northern Ireland for years - it did not help. It did not stop kneecapping, the shooting of innocents who were the "wrong" religion, or the police arresting someone based on "what we beat out of Patrick last night".
It is bullying. I am bigger than you and I have more than you. So now I will try to take information from you. You probably don't even have it, but that is not really a problem.
Go read all the comments on the original posting in Boing Boing - they are quite instructive.
I think this essay written by an interrogation expert gives a good perspective on the reasons torture is never a good idea.
Not pursuing all means possible to get information is a rational thought. Flying planes into buildings and killing thousands and costing billions is not a rational thought. Tough times call for tough actions.
And remember, it's not terrorists they're torturing. It's suspects. People that could, and most likely are, completely innocent. I've had friends raided by ASIO simply for having darker skin and video cameras in public, so I'm not comforted by the prospect that the torture will 'only happen to terrorists' and only if there's some hypothetical nuclear bomb about to go off somewhere. Theoretically the only people raided would be terrorists, and the only people shot by police in the London subway would be terrorists. Reality doesn't exactly follow the script for '24' though.
There's a brilliant book called 'Stasiland'. In it they describe the torture of a young woman through sleep deprivation in Communist East Germany. Her response? She lies to make it stop. It's what they all did. Not just making torture completely ineffectual as an intelligence gathering resource, but wasting countless investigative hours following up false leads. And it also notes that following the fall of the Berlin Wall many people in East Germany actually missed 'the good old days' somewhat, when they felt safer as was a greater sense law and order. Law and order under the watchful eyes of a secret police-force, the notion of which would terrify most of us in the West. Yes, the Stasi could drag you off, torture you and imprison you on a whim but according to them if you followed the rules it wouldn't happen to you. Sound familiar? Most people analysing Communist-era Eastern Europe would say differently, of course but it seems we are willingly frog-marching our way into this future in our 'free' countries.
I for one don't want the Soviet style of 'security' to come to my country.
I just cannot see how people can think torture is acceptable (and yes, Chris, I am talking about you!) or effective. I think, if it actually worked, I would be more inclined to accept it. But it doesn't. Every study ever done proves it.
And what about that Stamford study, where they divided people into Prisoners and Guards and then watched what they did. Mostly what they did was become more aggressive in the case of the Guards and more passive in the case of the Prisoners. People who use torture will also follow this path. People are People and Psychology is Psychology
I have a baby daughter and you want to tell me that I should care about how some man is treated that for no-true reason just wants to end her life? Bottom line is terrorists understand all of the red tape we have to go through to do just about anything. They know these legal parameters and use it to their advantage and it's just a matter of time before it haunts us again. These great studies that you talk about are all just propaganda. In fact, we just had a four star general testify before congress and he said that the United States' current interrogation techniques work just fine.
I guess he must not have seen the "Every study ever done proves it."
Were the guards in Abu Ghraib prison highly trained? Are the people held indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay guilty of anything at all?
If you do the same as your enemy, you are the same as your enemy. Take a look at the number of civilian deaths in Iraq - they total more than died in the Twin Towers. I think you have got your own back.
Perhaps it is time to stop. Oh, no, wait - they have got oil and we want it, there is reconstruction work to sell to the highest bidder and, hey, the folks back home love us.
But you cling to your belief and I will cling to mine. We won't change anything anyway. Bush and the Blair/Brown conglomerate ruling this pleasant land will do what they will and our freedoms and civil liberties will be eroded in the name of preserving them.
I'd say that was ironic.
You site Abu Ghraib prison--which was a mistake and mistakes were made. You put soldiers into high stress environments where lots of lives are lost--mistakes will be made.
Are the people held indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay guilty of anything at all? Yes dozens have been tried here in the United States under tribunal military courts. Dozens have in fact also been released. Rhetorical questions asked which you should have checked the facts. While I was at Guantanamo Bay we never had enlisted doing interrogation with the inmates...so again...the "trouble is they aren't the ones doing the interrogation." is just plain false. Every time I had guard duty it was always a CIA official doing interrogation.
That still does not make torture an ethically correct or morally right thing to do. Which is what I was saying when I posted this. If, when your daughter grows, she becomes a Patty Hearst or joins what you consider a terrorist organisation, would you want people to do that to her?
You don't want your daughter to become so misguided that she wants to kill hundreds, but will it be okay if she wants to torture hundreds instead? I'd argue that being willing to torture someone reflects just as poorly on someone's humanity as wanting to kill someone.
Here's my last question. If your daughter does become a terrorist would you torture her yourself?
As for my daughter. Just because I endured these events doesn't mean I'm qualified to do them to others. I mentioned above having highly trained people using effective means not any Tom, Joe, and Harry taking matters into their own hands.
I accept that some degree of sleep deprivation is part of your military training. Did you also go through water-boarding and electrodes? Were you lead to honestly believe you were going to die during the ordeal? Or that your family would be tortured? All of these are common 'interrogation' techniques. I would certainly qualify them as torture.
You seem to dismiss Bookmole's comparison of British treatment of IRA suspects as well. Why is that? Were IRA bombs somehow more 'rational' than those of Islamic Terrorists? I doubt the victims of those bombs would agree.
And lastly, if you don't want to look at other countries' experiences with the failures of torture perhaps you could look to US history. The Salem Witch Trials showed exactly how effective torture is as a method of intelligence gathering.
Anyway. I've spent enough time on this.
That's fair enough. I don't see us agreeing any time soon about this. So the last thing I'll say is that I don't think an irrational solution to an irrational problem is any better way to deal with it. An irrational solution by definition simply isn't logical and makes no sense.
You nailed it.. really.
Anything that society comes up with to deal with irrational deeds will never deemed rational. Only hope you have is an effective counter response.
And since we've all decided to jump back into the debate, you suggested I look up the Geneva Convention requirements for what constitutes torture. I think you'll find that's at the heart of whether the US interrogation methods are legal under international conventions. The US decided to redefine what torture meant and re-interpreted the Geneva Convention accordingly. Other countries, and the UN, were horrified by this because it opens the gates for any country to read what they like into international conventions and thus ignore the spirit of international law. What your country is doing is still classified as torture in other countries. Water-boarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation are all still illegal in Australia and I for one am very thankful of that.
Chris, If you've got Osama Bin Laden in your hands and you're sure it is him, then nobody is denying you the right to interrogate him, or even use a bit of coercion. But suppose if you get an information that he has changed his face by some plastic surgery or something, and if you start torturing every other bearded person on earth just because you believe he could be the Osama, is not going to solve the problem.
For you, it would be like fighting the battle against terrorism with one hand tied at your back, but that's the way it should be. If you feel that terrorists will make use of your Red Tape regulations, then perhaps you are just cribbing. Just like Banks do.. when some subprime borrowers furnish wrong information. The solution is not to stop giving loans to all the subprime borrowers because they might default, but to make better information systems to keep track of everybody's credit history and then make your judgement.
And one more thing Chris.. your response is similar to the message perpetrated by all the dictators of the world like Fidel Castro, Pervez musharraf to their populaces : "We are doing this for your own good!!" I just hope you don't actually believe them.