Skip to content

GOTT-September 30, 2006

Recently Passed Torture Bill

Those wondering just what was agreed to in the “detainee treatment bill” that was just passed by Congress can start with this helpful post by William Edmundson, and follow the links there.  Especially noteworthy — even to those unconcerned about our treatment of foreign enemy fighters, but who just might be moved to worry about the President’s new power over U.S. citizens — is this analysis in the LA Times by Bruce Ackerman (Yale Law).  (Ackerman was writing a couple days ago, before the bill was passed by the Senate; what he feared would happen in Congress has since happened.)

Update, Links:  For some reason, as of now (4PM Eastern, 9/30), the bottom of this post says there are 0 comments to it.  (At least as I access it on my computer.  Yes, I’ve tried “refresh.”)  But there is a comment in which George Hunsinger recommends the weblog Balkinization for legal commentary. While I’m updating, I might as well also give the link to Amnesty International’s short on-line analysis.

New Update, for the sake of those who don’t normally read comments: Hunsinger now has made a longer, second comment to this post, “a late night rumination on torture,” which is like a post in its own right, and is well worth reading.

Posted by Keith DeRose in Current Affairs | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/446774/6231401

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Recently Passed Torture Bill:

Comments

The best expert legal commentary on the web is at Balkinization. (You can google it.)

It’s run by Prof. Jack Balkin of the Yale Law School. He has an outstanding lineup of contributors. Their analysis is, in general, measured and disturbing.

Posted by: George Hunsinger | September 30, 2006 at 02:30 PM

I just found your blog. I wonder if you might be interested in my blogs – www.theologyofgcberkouwer.blogspot.com & www.christinallthescriptures.blogspot.com

Posted by: Charles Cameron | September 30, 2006 at 08:04 PM

A late night rumination on torture.

It has been known at least since Aristotle (4th C. BCE) that torture doesn’t produce reliable information. You don’t have to be a genius to figure this out.

Colin Powell learned this to his lasting regret and shame by using information gained by torture (not that he knew it at the time) in his widely influential but spuious and now renounced UN speech in February 2003. The speech that took us into war.

So if torture doesn’t work as a tool of interrogation, and if it should never be used even if it did, what’s the point?

Not easy to figure out. Here’s a hypothesis. Cheney calls it “working the dark side.” Perhaps very apt as a clue.

Suppose torture is really about terror, domination and control. Both in the torture chamber and then in the wider world beyond, it inspires terror in the victims and potential victims. It is an attempt at social control, though demonic to the core. No doubt it works — for a while. But then there’s always that divine cunning in history that never seems to want to let the dark side have the last word. Call it Resurrection from the dead.

At the same time, torture comes about as close to absolute power as one can get in this life. It therefore corrupts, and corrupts absolutely, just as Lord Acton warned.

Interrogators, officials, institutions, and whole societies get hooked by working the dark side, as if it were a kind of irresistable addiction. It is rooted in the fears, the frustrations, the blind anger, and the libido dominandi of the strong over against the weak.

It is a dark and irrational force that eventually devours those who yield themselves to its practice.

That’s what was legalized in this country last week.

It can’t happen here, but it’s happening, and who knows where the mayhem will end.

Posted by: George Hunsinger | October 01, 2006 at 09:17 PM

So if torture doesn’t work as a tool of interrogation, and if it should never be used even if it did, what’s the point?

Another hypothesis (no need to choose between hypotheses; both can partially explain): No matter how unreliable “information” gained by means of torture is, it can be useful if (a) you’re trying to make a case for a certain policy (in prospect or retrospect), (b) the “information” gained, if allowed, suppports the case you wish to make, and (c) those you are making the case to (or at least enough of them) are foolish enough to allow you to use “information” gained by means of torture in making your case.

Posted by: Keith DeRose | October 04, 2006 at 12:44 PM

Skip to toolbar