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Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States 1st Edition
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Gordon argues that the most common ethical approaches to torture-utilitarianism and deontology (ethics based on adherence to duty)-do not provide sufficient theoretical purchase on the problem. Both approaches treat torture as a series of isolated actions that arise in moments of extremity, rather than as an ongoing, historically and socially embedded practice. She advocates instead a virtue ethics approach, based in part on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Such an approach better illumines torture's ethical dimensions, taking into account the implications of torture for human virtue and flourishing. An examination of torture's effect on the four cardinal virtues-courage, temperance, justice, and prudence (or practical reason)-suggests specific ways in which each of these are deformed in a society that countenances torture.
Mainstreaming Torture concludes with the observation that if the United States is to come to terms with its involvement in institutionalized state torture, there must be a full and official accounting of what has been done, and those responsible at the highest levels must be held accountable.
- ISBN-100199336431
- ISBN-13978-0199336432
- Edition1st
- PublisherOxford University Press
- Publication dateMay 8, 2014
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions9.3 x 1 x 6.4 inches
- Print length240 pages
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- Publisher : Oxford University Press; 1st edition (May 8, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0199336431
- ISBN-13 : 978-0199336432
- Item Weight : 15.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 9.3 x 1 x 6.4 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,407,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,482 in Ethics
- #5,176 in Church & State Religious Studies
- #5,297 in History of Religion & Politics
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About the author

Rebecca Gordon received her B.A. from Reed College and her M.Div. and Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from Graduate Theological Union. She teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco and for the university's Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. Previous publications include Letters From Nicaragua and Cruel and Usual: How Welfare "Reform" Punishes Poor People .
Prior to her academic career, Gordon spent a few decades working in a variety of national and international movements for peace and justice. These include the movements for women's liberation and LGBT rights; movements in solidarity with the struggles of poor people in Central America; the anti-apartheid movement in the United States and South Africa; and movements opposing U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1984, Gordon spent six months living in the war zones of Nicaragua, and in 1990, three months teaching desktop publishing at an anti-apartheid newspaper in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a founder of Californians for Justice, a statewide organization dedicated to the political enfranchisement of marginalized people, especially young people, poor people, and people of color. Other organizations she has worked with include the Applied Research Center, the Center for Third World Organizing, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, and the Asian-Pacific Environmental Network. She is an editor of WarTimes/Tiempo de guerras, a which seeks to bring a race, class, and gender perspective to issues of war and peace.
Contact Rebecca Gordon: rgordon at usfca dot edu
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The subtitle of “Mainstreaming Torture” shows Gordon’s method of attack. The question of torture as state policy seemed settled—we were the good guys and we didn’t do it. Torture was not only immoral but was also a felony and a treaty violation. Absolute prohibition of torture was one the key elements that set the United States apart from regimes that practiced it. We didn’t have death squads, we didn’t use poison gas against our citizens, we didn’t litter the streets with the bodies of those who suffered extra-judicial execution. “Disappear” wasn’t a transitive verb in American English—unlike the authorities in Argentina during the “Dirty War”, Guatemala during the 30 year civil war or in Pinochet’s Chile, our police didn’t “disappear” people. We didn’t torture.
This changed on 9/11/2001 according to the scoundrels who approved of torture, authorized it in the bureaucracy, justified it in the press and carried it out. Dick Cheney said "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective”. His use of “our” as a modifier includes, as far as he is concerned, the American people and not just the band of evildoers responsible. Three former directors of the CIA wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “enhanced interrogation” which includes waterboarding the subject, confining him in a coffin sized box, as well as chaining him to the ceiling for days and locking him naked in a freezing cell, led to the capture of important Al Qaeda commanders, disrupted terrorist plots and saved thousands of lives. The three were the most senior members of the chain of command that led to torture. They made their claims without providing evidence, trusting that the confidence the American people had in intelligence agencies would be sufficient.
Defenders of torture try to defend their objectively evil actions by referring to a ticking time bomb theory. It goes like this: there is a nuclear bomb hidden somewhere in New York City and the terrorist responsible for setting it has been captured. Only he knows the code to stop it from exploding. Would you torture him and save the lives of thousands if not millions? The ticking bomb scenario is a powerful hypothetical and one that the unindicted war criminals who authorize torture hope you accept.
But it is only hypothetical. In, in real life you don’t get such clean scenarios—you don’t get Jack Bauer saving the world on “24”. In real life you get equivocation and confusion, lack of clarity and the fog of war. You get incomplete information that conflicts with what you think you already know about the nature, magnitude, and timing of threats, and about the identity of those responsible. You get what has always been the result to questioning under torture: lies, half-truths, anything that the victim feels will make his tormentors stop. And, as Gordon points out, you don’t have a lone wolf but heroic government agent doing the dirty work. There must be a sophisticated infrastructure of evil including trained practitioners, doctors and psychologists willing to help inflict pain, isolated places where torture is carried out, like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the prisons of compliant foreign governments plus lackeys and lickspittles prepared to justify it.
Once we start justifying immoral actions based on their hoped for outcomes, there is no principled place to stop. “Mainstreaming Torture" is an important and necessary book that deserves a wide audience.
