I was going to do some research and writing on torture today.
Instead I got sidetracked into helping someone paint a room, and the labour mellowed me out to a state of mental inertia I’m oddly grateful for at the moment.
I recommend that my Canadian friends try to catch part 2 of the CBC National interview with William Simpson. He is a Canadian-British citizen who spent two years in a Saudi jail.
Last week a Canadian senator questioned Sampsons story.
The interview Peter Mansbridge has done is quite similar to the Barbara Walters interview with Terry Anderson who spent seven years as a captive in Lebanon.
“In March 1985, Terry Anderson was a good man swept up in the violent conflicts of a turbulent era. At the mercy of Shiite captors for nearly seven years, he lived in chains, wondering fearfully if each day would be the one he’d be released - or killed. Imprisoned and beaten like an animal, he was tortured by grief, by fatigue, by hopelessness. But his spirit soared beyond captivity, and he never gave up. Nor did those who loved him - his sister, his fiancée, his daughter, his close friends and colleagues. Now he’s returned with a harrowing and poignant story of survival, as well as new revelations about what was really happening behind the scenes in the Middle East - the events that plunged Anderson and his fellow hostages into days, weeks, and, unthinkably, years of darkness.”
The truth gives itself away in Sampson’s body language. Not the obvious, but the subtle, unknown signals a body gives…. in his eyes, his stillness, his control…. how a memory is retrieved in spite of….haunted….haunting….
We know torture is used in Muslim countries, and we know our countries use it too. It is something we don’t want to think about or admit.
Dogfightatbankstown is a new Australian blog.
He’s asking some serious questions about Australia’s role.
I myself haven’t finished with this topic yet but I am just an anonymous blogger putting out thoughts into cyberspace for noone to read. More sorting things out in my own head. These are the two main lines of concern that I have…
1. There is a nasty confluence of events down here in the lucky country…
a government dominated by lawyers who create legal non-entities to get around problems.
a) the ASIO bill and other measures against terrorism which for us mean a non-suspect can be detained and interrogated etc with no right to remain silent, no recourse to a lawyer, no right of appeal etc.; you only need to be seen to have some information which may help fight terrorism; you may be a journalist, cleric, blogger - you can be rounded up (and if the US Patriot act is already picking up non-terrorist related people in its dragnet…
b) appointment of Ruddock as Attorney General ( an outspoken critic of the judiciary, which we need as another check in the system) and the one who will have the final say as to who gets interrogated.
c) the high probability that our own intelligence and armed forces personnel can and do practice ‘torture lite.’
This doesn’t bode well for Aussies - Christians or otherwise - especially if terrorism escalates. But it also lessens our ability to fight against torture of Christians say in Thailand or Burma, whose governments persecute Christians for no other reason than because they are perceived as being a ‘threat’ to their regime.
2. We have Christians who are also in our intelligence forces and armed services. How should they respond if called upon to interrogate…and…coerce a suspect?
This is a tough subject. A NIMBY. (not in my backyard)
Don’t turn away, ok?
I’m curious.
What do you know and think about the shadowy role your country plays?
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The Atlantic has a long article about torture as its cover story this month, that I just happened to read this evening. It looks at some of the complexities in the use of torture, and concludes that it should be illegal in decent society. However, there will inevitably still be individual cases in which some form of physical coercion is needed to gain information from a prisoner. In these cases, says the Atlantic, the interogator must willingly break the law, and willingly accept the consequences if a court rules that he was wrong to do so.
I think that torture is something that must be treated as anathema by any decent society. However, I think there are cases where it’s better to exert evil against one (or a few, whatever) presumeably evil people in order to prevent a greater evil against a greater number of innocent people. In these cases, I agree that those involved must be individually held account for their actions afterwards.
The Atlantic Online has an interview with Mark Bowden, the author of the article (and also of a number of books, including Black Hawk Down) here.
You’ve taken that first step on the slippery slope to being a perpetrator of atrocities Andrew. If it is evil it is never appropriate no matter how much that cripples our ability to fight even greater evil.
Evil always perpetrates greater evil not good. This is a problem that is haunting the America today. The installation of Saddam Hussien in Iraq being a classic example. They undoubtedly felt that that evil was justified in their war against the greater evil that was Iran but look what it achieved. Genecide and a threat to world peace.
We cannot always stop other people from being evil but we can always stop ourselves.
So Chris, to take an example from the article, you would rather pay for the physical wellbeing (and consequent silence) of a captured terrorist with innocent blood? It’s a horrible connundrum, but it seems to me that it’s less bad to twist a terrorist’s arm to get him to share whatever information that he may have, than to keep him comfortable in mind and body and allow uninvolved people to die in a future terrorist attack. If this makes me a potential perpetrator of atrocities, well, watch out for my name on the news.
Andrew:
Are you suggesting the ends justify the means?
And do you honestly think all you’d have to do is twist an arm?
Is torture the only way to get information to save lives?
At the risk of looking down a slippery slope, I think that there might be individual cases where the ends justify the means. I think that a captive terrorist who knows time-sensitive information that could result in the death of innocents if not retrieved in time might be one such case. However, if you read the article, Mr. Bowden makes a distinction between all-out torture and torture-lite, or coercion. The article suggests that torture is not generally effective, since the body can adapt to pain. Coercion, which plays more on discomfort and mental pressure than outright pain, and doesn’t generally leave long-term damage, appears to more effective. In the cases where information must be forced out of someone, if coercive measures are the only tool that will do the job, then I think that they should be used. However, as also indicated in the article, the use of such measures should be against the law, and interogators who use them must account for their actions after the fact.
(I mentioned “twisting arms” above as a figure of speech, not as a specific technique that may or may not get someone to talk.)
Andrew:
I think you are looking at this discussion in a way I would. Starting somewhere.
As a citizen I ask myself if I could step into any job or responsibility the law allows.
If Canada had the death penalty, could I be the executioner?
If Canada allows security and military to use torture and coercion, could I train and carry these through?
Then, as a citizen I ask myself if I’m willing to give my government room to do what I cannot or will not do.
As a believer I ask myself if these are the only options available to us.
I have questions, but I don’t have answers.
I truly believe that although we live in a civilized society, we are fighting uncivilized people. We cannot fight them using our rules. When someone attacks you in the street do you use boxing rules and cry foul when your attacker breaks one, or do you street fight and win and defend yourself (and others). Is torture ideal? NO. Is it sometimes necessary to provide the greatest amount of protection for the populace? Yes. Would I be willing to do it if it were legal in the USA? I think so, but it would be difficult. It is not an easy question, but it is important that, as believers, we know where we stand.
I’m not sure how far I would go either. Like Bene, I have to put myself in the shoes of the interrogator…and ask myself those questions, while standing before my God. Self defense or going to the defense of others is different from planned coercion.
Bowden’s article quoted an interrogator who said that those who have ‘religious’ ideals are tough to break and rarely do break. So if we are thinking coercion is necessary for say, terrorism suspects, and if some of these are religious fanatics…well…
I think we have to sort those issues out because I see a very trigger happy mood permeating. A case of shoot first and don’t bother asking questions. So I doubt that such an attitude would also argue for restraint in interrogation, or that interrogation will be limited to hard core terrorist cases.
At the same time, there is much that can be done in terms of preventing situations like this arising in the first place (although I doubt they can be eliminated by human means). Sadly it seems some of us have only woken up to that since September 11, which is why many now see ordnance as the only option.