One of the infamous images documented by soldiers at Abu Ghraib
shows a hooded man standing on a box. The detainee’s hands
were attached to wires. He was told that he if he stepped off the box
he would be electrocuted.
Photo by Nubar Alexanian
June 6, 2009
According to a June 3 Associated Press-GfK survey, 52 percent of Americans say torture is justified in some cases to thwart terrorists attacks. More than two-thirds of Republicans say torture can be justified compared with just over a third of Democrats.
The poll comes on the heels of former Vice President Cheney’s unctuous justifications that “enhanced interrogation techniques” (a euphemism for torture), sanctioned by the Bush administration, are not torture. Cheney dismissed criticism as “contrived indignation and phony moralizing.”
The poll seems to indicate that, unfortunately, too many Americans are believing this big lie.
Those who sanction torture or justify torture either don’t know the law, or advocate flaunting the law, or have lost their moral bearings. Human torture is not only morally unacceptable – it is also a crime. Waterboarding, for example, is explicitly prohibited by the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. Using torture places us in the same company as history’s infamous torturers. Waterboarding, for example, dates back to the Dark Ages. By using torture, we have lost any ideological advantage we might have had — the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights. We became the thugs our enemies say we are.
How could a country with a Judaic-Christian heritage even consider torture justifiable? But then, I remember that many torture methods were invented during Roman Catholic Church inquisitions beginning in the 1300s, that torture was used during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693, and the public lynchings of blacks during the 19th and 20th centuries often included burning and torture.
And who can forget the U.S Army School of Americas (SOA)/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, based in Fort Benning, Georgia, which trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics. The SOA training manuals advocate torture, extortion, and execution.
Is it any wonder that SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America? Have we regressed as a society to where torture is yet again acceptable or never was unacceptable? Apparently so.
The Hunger Site
June 7, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Luke and Ralph, Thanks for bringing that survey to our attention. I assume it’s roundly accurate, although it’s at odds with a CNN poll last month. I was intrigued at other statistics as well, including an extraordinary 40% of respondents calling themselves Born-Again or Evangelical Christian. That number, to me, is diagnostic of the crushing ignorance that’s smothered America. Until we see a huge drop in that number, we’ll never “recover” from our climate/economic/political freefall. In other news, Dick Cheney’s PR campaign to prevent his prosecution seems to be working. 23% approved of him vs. 44% who didn’t, but the striking number was the 32% who hadn’t heard enough about him to make a decision. The NYTimes put him at 13% approval in May, 2007. Best, Bud
June 7, 2009 at 8:49 am
TJ Johnston, my apologies, I linked to wrong poll. Now corrected.
Here’s the corrected link:
http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com/pdf/AP-GfK_Poll_Supreme_Court_Final_Topline.pdf
June 7, 2009 at 8:12 am
I looked at the AP survey results linked in this op-ed, and I couldn’t find either the the question asking about the use of torture to prevent terrorist acts or the statistic stating 52 percent of Americans approve.
Am I reading the correct study? Could you point to where to where I could have missed it?
June 6, 2009 at 10:22 am
Ralph,
Don’t be too discouraged. A number of years ago I recall a survey that revealed that the majority of Americans favored overturning most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights. That’s why the founding fathers made it so difficult to change them.
Most Americans are greedy and cruel idiots. Our job is to hold on until Genentech finds a cure.
h.
June 6, 2009 at 9:00 am
Military who sanction or teach torture are traitors and war criminals.
Traditionally, the best in our military were taught to survive torture, not commit it. They prided themselves for trying to be more heroic, humane, and magnanimous in the hell of battle and after.
What cloud am I living on? you may wonder. Bear with me.
I do not think the superior military instructors at Ft. Benning ever wanted to see his students graduate to inflict torture. In most cases, and like most Americans, they thought that America’s role was to encourage justice, liberty and democracy.
Looking back to the dawn of the Cold War, growth of covert operations without oversight, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and subsequent events– it is easy to see how our military (like the rest of us) were lied to and duped by powerful forces more interested in satisfying ruling class greed for global influence and resources.
Propaganda has become exponentially more sophisticated and manipulative in our society. The antiwar movement was shattered by a Kerry candidacy in ’04 and rubbed out with the Obama election in ’08.
The criminals who sanctioned torture under Bush will never be tried by the Obama administration– nor will Obama allow the release of hideous photos of torture that have surfaced since.
If real inquiries into America’s misdeeds were allowed, Obama argues, it will hurt the morale of our armies today: who (again, like most Americans) continue to believe in the righteousness of their country’s role in the world.
Obama is lying.
The truth would set them free to fulfill their oaths to protect and defend our Constitution.
Real inquiries would point to the criminals at the top who put our own military and people (and world peace) at risk.
Even more than to the bad seeds at the School of the Americas– real inquiries would point to criminals at the top of our government and beyond, to Wall Street, K Street and Madison Avenue, who are most responsible for America’s demise into cruel decadence.
Real inquiries would point to Obama himself and his handlers– and to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter et al. and their handlers– the captains of capital and profiteers of war.
Real inquiries would result in an unprecedented revolutionary national catharsis, one which never happened after Watergate and Nixon’s resignation… why?
Because Gerald Ford brought (whistle along), “Change to America”.
http://tinyurl.com/7slnlk