Rebecca Gordon combines the fire and urgency of a long time political activist with the intellectual rigor of an academically trained moral philosopher. She shows that that torture done by and in the name of sovereign governments isn’t just aberrant actions by out of control members of the military or deranged intelligence officers but is an ongoing practice carried out over long periods of time. It is institutionalized state cruelty and degradation with its own traditions, histories and rules.
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.
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