Thursday, October 19, 2006
Torture: Just What We Do 2
Earlier I discussed torture. This was about the quiet but clear drift towards an official acceptance of torture as a weapon against terrorism. I broadly agreed with my friend John Gray. Torture is just what human beings do. It cannot be banished from human affairs by human rationality or aspiration. Gray has used the return of torture as evidence supporting his own scepticism about the idea of progress. Now a BBC survey shows that, globally, about one in three people believe that some degree of torture should be perimissible. Since there was no previous survey to provide comparable figures, this is not evidence of increasing support for torture. But two points: the overall figure is remarkably high and the reponse in individual countries seems significant. In Israel 43 per cent are in favour of torture, the highest figure of all, and only 48 per cent against. Second is Iraq (42 per cent) followed by Indonesia and the Philippines (40 per cent). China is at 37 per cent, as is Russia, and the US figure is 36 per cent. At 24 per cent Britain is the highest of the Western European countries polled and Italy (14 per cent) the lowest. There appears to be a clear correlation with the immediate experience of terrorism, though the Madrid bombings do not seem to have persuaded the Spanish (16 per cent). No firm conclusions can be drawn from one survey. But it is striking how many people are prepared to support torture openly and in the unthreatening moment of being questioned by a pollster. When the terrorist chips are down and when the question is not being asked of an individual but of a group, then support would certainly be much higher. To repeat the conclusion of my last post, torture, like gentleness, compassion and art, is just what we do.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I'm not so sure about neatly grouping us into a "we", Bryan in what could amount to an acceptancve if not justification for evil. All distinctions between Adolf Hitler and Gandhi blurred instantly. The vast percentages ready to accept torture also shows how easy it is to lead people in the direction one wishes. I wonder what bLair and Bush might confess to under such duress. The total forgetting of the vast numbers of those executed for being witches thanks to torture, the vast numberes in Soviet Russia who "confessed" to whatever the State wished.(Depressing to have to make such tedious, obvious points.) Though I suspect those who support torture are not too aware of such things. I also feel that, such is the nature of the people who are pushing things in this direction, that contrary to what we imagine, the torture itself is also an end rather than simply a means. The same as could be said about the Nazis' exterminations in the concentration camps.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank God for the Moustache Brothers.
Fair point, Andrew. But sometimes the truth is dangerous, I suppose. One needs a coeherent reason not to torture under any circumstances and that is what seems to have been lost.
ReplyDeleteWe need a Jesus or two to make white white and black black perhaps. And to quote my friend Huxley in this issue, "A democracy is a society dedicated to the proposition that power is often abused and should be entrusted to officials in limited amounts only."
ReplyDeleteI think one Jesus is more than enough. The problem is that those who engage in torture are usually those who view every issue as either/or, black or white, right or wrong, yes or no. And some of the worst offenders believe they have a direct line to Jesus.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps a direct line to a spiritual entity of a different persuasion.
ReplyDeleteVery true Andrew. Please forgive my bias. In the final analsis, torture and other forms of barbarity are likely to be with us for a very long time, so long as those in power continue to fall back on religious dogma to justify their anctions instead of reasoned argument.
ReplyDeleteReasoned argument...
ReplyDeleteWe largely aren't taught how to construct or analyse one anymore. A little less dogma and a lot more logic is my recipe.
"And some of the worst offenders believe they have a direct line to Jesus."
ReplyDeleteIs that really what the communists believed? I thought they were mostly atheists.
I don't trust polls like this because the way you ask the question can get the result you want...
1) Suppose a bomb is planted in an elemntary school and is set to blow up in 30 minutes. Would it be OK to torture the person who planted the bomb to find out which school it is in?
2) Suppose a person is suspected of terrorism. Would it be OK to stick knitting needles into his eyeballs to find out what information he might have?
I am guessing but I think the answer may be different depending on which question you ask.
The wider context of this survey is, I think, a general assault on civil liberties in western society. In virtually every crime thriller there is a moment when the villain is able to delay his just reward because some wet liberal "cares more about his rights than the victim". Our image of a torturer is as likely to be Dirty Harry as the gestapo.
ReplyDeleteAnd adding to Simon's point, here is coverage of the Military Commissions Act, just ratified in the US. The right of the US government to describe someone as an "enemy combatant" which does away with habeus corpus, the necessity of any evidence behind the authorities right to incarcerate indefinitely. This really should be required viewing. Olbermann someone who thankfully seems to uphold the dignity of what the news media could be.
ReplyDeleteJust go to the Goodbye Habeus Corpus option. Basically the legality of extending what's going on in Guantanamo Bay across the US. "The only thing keeping you, I or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity of the President of the US.". "Revokes over 200 years of American principles and values". You have to endure a 30 second add first but what the hell.
We can sympathize with Dirty Harry as a "torturer" for two reasons:
ReplyDelete1) There is no premeditation. Harry doesn't go and get his torture equipment while his victim squirms in his chair. Harry pounds on the bad guy because Harry is mad and he needs the information this moment. We can forgive him because it occurs in the heat of the battle.
2) There is no question about the guild of the bad guy. We know he did it. Harry knows he did it. He was caught red-handed. We know that there is no possibility of Harry beating up the wrong guy.
But show people examples of real torture and they will almost universally be opposed to it even when the victim is a known terrorist.
Torture, or any other harm you can do to another person because you have the power to do it and it might benefit you is wrong. It can never be justified in any absolute sense. If people choose to do it to benefit themselves they must know it's wrong and take whatever consequences flow from it. It's typical of modern western man that he not only wants to do it because it suits his purposes, but he also wants to find a way of justifying it so that he squares his desire to do what is expedient with what is right. We know in our hearts it isn't possible to do it but we are prepared to die in the attempt.
ReplyDeleteForgot the link. "I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by loss of poor short term memory". Anyway here it is...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15318240/