Recently I saw both of those happen in a discussion that started out about President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m not certain he deserved it this early, either, but that’s neither here nor there to where the discussion went. For soon there was someone in the discussion waving the flag of his father’s military service and talking about how torture has saved Americans, and challenging those of us who disagreed with him if we would advocate torture if we knew it would save family members.
I really want to know what fantasy world this person is living in.
First of all, when someone is tortured, they will say what they think will make the pain stop, whether it’s the truth or not. Information gathered from torture methods have been proven to be unreliable (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004644 among others). So why is there this popular notion that somehow American lives have been saved and we have been protected through the use of torture?
I believe it is twofold. First
of all, in general the people who believe this are the disciples of Faux News and that is the party line there. But I think part of the reason has to do with what we’ve seen in movies and on television. The central character in certain films and television shows has been shown torturing a suspect and getting information that saves the world, and that is how people want to believe the world works.Their argument can be turned around. What if you knew that torturing someone would result in the deaths of men and women in the armed services because their friends and family would be so angry with what was done to them they would decide to take it out on the nearest and most available American target? That’s a stronger possibility than the first straw-man argument, but no one wants to hear that.
The truth is, for many people after 9/11, torturing people felt good. It felt like a way of “getting back” after what was “done to us.” And it made a lot of people in the world who were on our side after 9/11 turn their backs on us.
The same people will usually argue that torturing people is what has prevented attacks on this country since 9/11, not that there’s a shred of evidence to that argument. It’s just a nice fairy-tale people have built up for themselves because it makes them feel better. If anything, there have been more instances of terrorism since then, just not on American soil. American citizens and corporations in other countries have been regular targets of terrorism since 9/11. People just don’t care because it didn’t happen here or to anyone they know.
If the only way you can justify your side in an argument is to use “what if” and create a fairy tale, you don’t have a strong argument, despite what Faux News has told you. Life doesn’t work like an episode of 24 or an action flick.
© 2009 Patti Aliventi
Related reading:
The Fiction Behind Torture Policy
The lawyers designing interrogation techniques cited Jack Bauer more frequently than the Constitution.
