This is, of course, a truism. Not the least less true for that, but it still falls in the realm of, "D'uh".
Torture, and the repudiation of it, is part of how I come to be here. It's, actually, how I came to be lots of places on the web. I was an interrogator, and interrogation instructor for the US Army for 16 years. I was enlisted from 1993, to 2009. Half my service was before, "That Tuesday," in Sept. '01, and half after.
I was in the invasion force in April 2003. A couple of my friends were on the third vehicle to cross the berm, with the armored column of the 3ID (one of them said, "it was all sand in front of us, and when I turned around, there were all the tanks lined up behind me).
Torture is more than a moral issue to me. It's personal.
Funny. I had a "quiet war" (if you have to have one, try for a quiet one, trust me on this). That is, perhaps, funny sad, more than funny ha-ha, but it's still funny. Then I was home. Away from the hustle and strife. I didn't have the sound of semi-distant gunfire in the mornings. I wasn't sleeping with a rifle in arm's reach. I didn't have to put on armor to go to supper.
But the war wasn't over. My war, to be clicéd, didn't really start until April, 2004. Just about the time I was released from Active Duty back to the Calif. Army National Guard, when Abu Ghraib hit the news.
It clobbered me.
Imagine that you are priest. A good priest. You know there are some bad apples. You know there are priests who take advantage of their parishioners. Not just the usual foibles of being human, and committed to a difficult way of life, but those who take advantage of the peculiar relationship they have to those who are in their care. But you don't think it's endemic. You trust that in the egregious cases the Church will step in to stop things.
Then the scandal breaks.
That's a crisis of faith. So too for me was Abu Ghraib.
I was lucky. Because I was in the Guard, I could speak pretty freely. I'd been blogging about the war, and politics; while I was in hospitals recovering, but once I was back in the Reserve Component I wasn't worried about AR 600-200, quite so much. When I wasn't on orders, I was a private citizen.
Torture doesn't work. As a means of systematically collecting information it fails. As means of collecting it, "just this once" it might get valid information, but you will never know, and the odds are so highly stacked against you that it's better not to try.
So I went "to and fro" around the web, making the arguments. It has gotten to the point I can script the response pattern. I wish it were boring. I wish I could stop. I pray it doesn't become an obsession. A couple of months ago I was in one of the routine pissing matches, and I stumbled on an article which seemed relevant. It was a journal article, and I didn't have a subscription, nor yet a handy library in which to go and read it.
So I did what one does in such situations... I sent an e-mail to the author, asking if I could get a copy. What I got, in addition, was in invitation to speak at a conference. Dr. Arrigo refuses to participate in them without an interrogator present; because, she says, there is no way to get it right, without one. I jumped at the chance.
Why? Because torture is a moral issue? If not me, who? If not now, when?
You can see me speaking here:
If you want to see some of the rest of the conference go here
The torture apologists, and the torture mongers are arguing that torture is, at the very least, the lesser evil. They are, at the upper bound arguing it's a moral good; even a moral imperative. They are wrong. I am in the position of being able to speak to their error. So I will. Here, there and everywhere.
It sounds self-aggrandizing, even melodramatic. What it is, is sort of tedious, and boring. The same arguments, the same responses, the same foolish stupidity, cupidity, and duplicity. Evil is banal. All it takes to flourish is the silence of assent.
Well, the war radicalized me, and I brought it home with me. Someday I hope it's over. Someday I want the "debate" to be closed. Until that day... I'll just have to keep on keeping on.
Thank you for your support.