Why Torture?

The American Senate Intelligence Committee was able to make public, just before the Republicans were able to stop it, its report on the treatment of prisoners suspected of terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. These revelations involve all at once shame for the United States, a step forward for human rights and concern for the future.

It is evidently a stain (one more) on the history of this great country committed to democracy and the protection of rights that an intelligence agency was engaged in monstrous acts of violence against human beings in contradiction of the rules of international law. All the same, it is comforting and informative of the good aspects of the American political system that such conduct has been brought to light.

But it is disconcerting to notice that these crimes are not recognized as such, as no criminal prosecution has been undertaken by the attorney general of the United States. Even more, CIA Director John Brennan, nominated by President Obama, refuses to accept responsibility on the part of the agency he directs, even while admitting repugnant errors. According to him, the great majority of the CIA’s employees acted as brave patriots.

Along with the American Civil Liberties Union, some American citizens are outraged by this and consider such violations of human rights to be completely unacceptable and condemnable, whatever the accusations brought against the victims of this treatment are. For the majority, however, it seems there is a tendency to deplore the recourse to torture because of the inefficacy of the method rather than for moral reasons. The report demonstrates at length that the information was not gathered by means of the muscular — if not barbarous — methods that were used. In other words, this is a case of grave errors, policies harmful to the United States much more than criminal actions in violation of the American tradition of the protection of rights.

A State Of Mind

Why is it this way? Why have apparently well-intentioned people managed to commit such crimes with the approbation of the highest authorities in the country and of large sectors of public opinion? How can one still justify torture in a country that always considers itself to be a model of democracy and civic spirit?

Certain elements of the American tradition, notably of a state of mind spread throughout the population, as much among the elites as the middle class, can help us understand this behavior.

First, American exceptionalism, the tendency to consider the United States to be a civilization unique in the world, a beacon capable of throwing light on all humanity, can easily lead to an unfailing good conscience, to a supposedly infallible patriotism, according to the popular slogan: “America can’t go wrong.” This is a variant of the erroneous but always seductive maxim that the end justifies the means. Barry Goldwater, the father of the contemporary conservatism of the Republican Party, declared proudly that, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Today, still, some people — especially Republicans — come to the defense of the CIA by asserting that one cannot treat gently the people responsible for the ignoble murder of 3,000 Americans. When avenging the honor of the country is at issue, according to them, one cannot ask oneself about the legality of the means employed. In the end, everything which is capable of leading to total retribution becomes acceptable.

Manichaeism

Further still, at the bottom of this vindictive state of mind there is a Manichaean conception of humanity which seems to have been maintained by several American leaders and right away by large sectors of the population. According to this conception, which derives from the Middle Ages and which has never ceased to inhabit minds in the West, evil is at work in the world as much as good, to the point that certain humans can be considered the incarnation of the evil that it is necessary to combat and in the end annihilate by all means. It is important to ask whether, in a society which for many years considered African-Americans and Native Americans to be sub-human, it is easy for people to let themselves treat the people responsible for terrorist actions hostile to the United States as the damned living on Earth, individuals who can no longer merit any respect.

Inconsistency

There is a persistent inconsistency to be found among people who claim they are Christians but do not recognize the central heritage of Christianity: the recognition that every human, whatever he or she may be, even in extreme deprivation, is always worthy of respect and capable of being forgiven. Sen. John McCain, a Republican with a tendency toward war, had the courage to vigorously support the conclusions of the report and to take up the defense of the fundamental rights of terrorist prisoners. He was himself a prisoner and tortured during the war in Vietnam. He knows what he is talking about. President Obama, however — who has repudiated torture from the beginning of his presidency, proposed dialogue with his enemies and expressed strong humanitarian convictions — adopts a surprising discretion. Is it necessary to conclude from this that he also would be won over by inconsistency in the matters of human rights and the treatment of enemies?