Scott Horton: The Two-Front Battle Over Torture
[Remarks delivered, in slightly differing form, at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, on Nov. 15, 2007 and as the Arlene Shaw lecture at the Huguenot Church in Pelham, New York, on Nov. 18, 2007. Scott Horton is a contributor to Harper's Magazine and writes No Comment for this website. A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School.]
Three and a half years after Abu Ghraib, the struggle over the Administration’s torture policies continues to be fought, both in Washington, and in millions of homes around the country, on the television. Today when Americans turn to the issue of torture, we focus on a debate in the halls of Congress, and on events which have transpired in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, Guantánamo and a dozen “blacksites” the exact location of which remains a mystery. But torture is more than an aspect of what President Bush calls “the program,” it is also an infection working its way through our popular culture. Scenes and images of sadistic torture have proliferated in television. I don’t mean news programs describing the debate and the techniques used. I mean programming which purports to be entertainment. The big offender is one particular network, the same one which floods the airwaves with softcore pornography in the guise of reporting which “condemns” it. And the single program which has done the most to champion torture is “24,” an adrenaline-packed show in which torture occurs every day.
Now in American popular culture, torture used to be something that was done by the Nazis, by the Soviets and Chinese in the Cold War. Americans were its victims, always standing steadfast against the evil that it embodied. But in the Fox Network vision of torture, Americans use it, they do so for patriotic purposes—to save thousands from attacks which would occur were torture not used—and, wondrous to relate, torture always works. So torture is now the favorite tool of the good guys. There is absolutely nothing coincidental about this. As Jane Mayer revealed in her article “Whatever It Takes,” published earlier this year in the New Yorker, this plot thread has been quite consciously crafted by Fox as a little boost for their friends in the White House. Dick Cheney and David Addington needed some help overcoming 230 years of American culture, starting with George Washington. Before George W. Bush, American presidents had been consistent in saying that torture was wrong and that America would never use it. So Fox sprang to their aid. Two centuries of American history went down the rat hole. And in its place: Enter Jack Bauer, the all-American hero. He tortures with gusto, and he saves the American people at least a couple of times every season. Torture is an indispensable part of his act. The series also gives us a new enemy. We have, of course, the vaguely Middle Eastern Islamic terrorist, the current Hollywood staple figure. But now we also have the naïve liberals who oppose torture and whose attitudes will cost thousands of lives if they aren’t checked. America’s security demands that we keep these people away from Congress and Government; if they have their way, and torture is banned again, thousands of innocent Americans will die.
The False Choice
What’s missing from these accounts? For one thing the fact that the ticking-bomb scenario upon which they build has never occurred in the entirety of human history. It’s a malicious fiction. For another the fact that torture, when applied, seems very likely to produce false intelligence upon which we rely to our own detriment. Ask Colin Powell. He delivered a key presentation to the Security Council in which he made the case for war against Iraq. The keystone of Powell’s presentation turned on evidence taken from a man named al-Libi who was tortured and said that Iraq was busily at work on an WMD program. This information, of course, was totally wrong. Al-Libi fabricated it because he knew this is just what the interrogators wanted to hear, and by saying it, they would stop torturing. It was a perfect demonstration of the tendency of torture to contaminate the intelligence gathering process with bogus data. And for Powell, it was “the most embarrassing day of my life.”...
Read entire article at Harper's
Three and a half years after Abu Ghraib, the struggle over the Administration’s torture policies continues to be fought, both in Washington, and in millions of homes around the country, on the television. Today when Americans turn to the issue of torture, we focus on a debate in the halls of Congress, and on events which have transpired in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, Guantánamo and a dozen “blacksites” the exact location of which remains a mystery. But torture is more than an aspect of what President Bush calls “the program,” it is also an infection working its way through our popular culture. Scenes and images of sadistic torture have proliferated in television. I don’t mean news programs describing the debate and the techniques used. I mean programming which purports to be entertainment. The big offender is one particular network, the same one which floods the airwaves with softcore pornography in the guise of reporting which “condemns” it. And the single program which has done the most to champion torture is “24,” an adrenaline-packed show in which torture occurs every day.
Now in American popular culture, torture used to be something that was done by the Nazis, by the Soviets and Chinese in the Cold War. Americans were its victims, always standing steadfast against the evil that it embodied. But in the Fox Network vision of torture, Americans use it, they do so for patriotic purposes—to save thousands from attacks which would occur were torture not used—and, wondrous to relate, torture always works. So torture is now the favorite tool of the good guys. There is absolutely nothing coincidental about this. As Jane Mayer revealed in her article “Whatever It Takes,” published earlier this year in the New Yorker, this plot thread has been quite consciously crafted by Fox as a little boost for their friends in the White House. Dick Cheney and David Addington needed some help overcoming 230 years of American culture, starting with George Washington. Before George W. Bush, American presidents had been consistent in saying that torture was wrong and that America would never use it. So Fox sprang to their aid. Two centuries of American history went down the rat hole. And in its place: Enter Jack Bauer, the all-American hero. He tortures with gusto, and he saves the American people at least a couple of times every season. Torture is an indispensable part of his act. The series also gives us a new enemy. We have, of course, the vaguely Middle Eastern Islamic terrorist, the current Hollywood staple figure. But now we also have the naïve liberals who oppose torture and whose attitudes will cost thousands of lives if they aren’t checked. America’s security demands that we keep these people away from Congress and Government; if they have their way, and torture is banned again, thousands of innocent Americans will die.
The False Choice
What’s missing from these accounts? For one thing the fact that the ticking-bomb scenario upon which they build has never occurred in the entirety of human history. It’s a malicious fiction. For another the fact that torture, when applied, seems very likely to produce false intelligence upon which we rely to our own detriment. Ask Colin Powell. He delivered a key presentation to the Security Council in which he made the case for war against Iraq. The keystone of Powell’s presentation turned on evidence taken from a man named al-Libi who was tortured and said that Iraq was busily at work on an WMD program. This information, of course, was totally wrong. Al-Libi fabricated it because he knew this is just what the interrogators wanted to hear, and by saying it, they would stop torturing. It was a perfect demonstration of the tendency of torture to contaminate the intelligence gathering process with bogus data. And for Powell, it was “the most embarrassing day of my life.”...