The Business of War: Torture – is it the American Way?
The article asserts that Pentagon officials needed a way to speed up the slow intelligence gathering from the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and they turned to SERE. SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) is a classified program used to train soldiers to resist torture from the enemy. SERE’s specific methods are classified, but anyone with an Internet access can log on to www.gosere.com and read the SERE creed.
The program supposedly re-creates the horrendous conditions of detainment camps in order to prepare a soldier to withstand such agony. The regimented training is always approved by the SERE trainee, and the trainers themselves have strict checks and balances so that planned abusive behavior does not go out of hand.
General James T. Hill said that a team from Gauntanamo came to the SERE school in order to obtain a list of torture methods for the high-level detainees. The methods included are sleep deprivation, physical assault, and stress positions, like the “sleeping bag” method was recently used on Iraqi General Abed Hamed Mowhoush. This interrogation method bound Mowhoush in the bag while the torturers asphyxiated him. It eventually killed him, and the interrogators are scheduled for a murder trial.
President Bush stated that torture will not be tolerated, but Vice-President Dick Cheney has worked hard in order to defeat a measure in Congress that would prohibit the CIA from “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of detainees. This week, the Senate is expected to approve a defense authorization bill that contains a proposal, sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, which would bar inhumane treatment of detainees by U.S. Agencies.
Torture has now become an issue like abortion or the death penalty. Some believe it should never be used, but others believe that not enough is used now. No matter what side you are on, I do not think that the American public has a right to be shocked by its existence and present use.
After all, America has a military whose sole function is the business of war. This means that the people of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines study combat in order to perfect it. The result is the enemy is inflicted with casualties, and some of them are innocent. We may not approve of this, but they are tolerated as long as there are those who are willing to fight against us. In an ideal world, the military would never need to work unless there was a hostile extra-terrestrial invasion.
Yet this is clearly not an ideal world. The military does work, necessarily or unnecessarily, in the line of defense every day. And if we tolerate these forces who are willing to fight, should we be surprised if factions exist on both sides who fight dirty? In other words, war has become a business, and torture is a natural by-product of that business. Torture is like the person in the office that has to tell an employee that he or she is fired. It’s not a pleasant job, but right or wrong, someone inevitably does it.
24, a popular television show that has recently gone into syndication, illustrates the apparent necessity for torture. This espionage-related drama tends to put the main character, Jack Bauer, in situations where torture is necessary in order to obtain information that will be used to save the lives of many. Season 4 focused on several torture scenes, including one with a minor. There was another instance in which a co-worker from the fictional agency CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) was suspected of being a traitor, and was subsequently given painful injections in order to find out who she was working for. It was soon discovered afterward that she was innocent, and the evidence used to make her look like a traitor was planted by the true traitor. In another instance, the son of the Secretary of Defense is interrogated because it is believed he has knowledge about the kidnapping of his father. It is later revealed that he was linked, but only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The show goes out of its way to show both the upsides and downsides of torture in a Post 9/11 world. Most justifications for the torture are weak, usually a phone call or some other piece of computer evidence that could easily be faked or altered. Usually, the victim “breaks” and reveals the information, and lives are saved. Other times, the victim is truly willing to die for his or her cause. In most real cases, there has been very little information revealed with torture that helped in any War On Terror investigations.
24 has stated on one of its DVD collections that the torture depicted on the show is not the type of torture actually used by government agencies. Apparently, if torture is used, it undergoes the same procedures in SERE, where it is under much controls so that it doesn’t go out of hand.
This fact does not calm me. Even if it is controlled, it means that government agencies are torturing people for the supposed greater good. Not only that, the terrorists that supposedly “deserve it” probably know about this limitation like I do. This makes torture a non-effective tool for obtaining information. After all, the whole idea behind torture is to get the victim to believe that there is no control over the procedure. It is to make the victim believe that he or she is under the thumb of someone completely devoid of pity. Imagine trying to get information from someone who knows that “You can’t kill me, and there is only so much pain you can give me.” Therefore, these controls have turned torture into a mindgame in which the victim must be tricked into believing that the torturer is willing to do harm.
Just like on 24, real-life torture has shown to be a limited and ineffective solution that only dehumanizes those that torture and those that approve. Unfortunately, torture will be the American way as long as war is around. Trying to put rules and restrictions on it may be wasted if the system does not require them in order to be effective.
