Torture For Torture's Sake

I never thought I'd see a time in my country when reasonable people would be asking if it was okay to torture. When torture is mentioned, most people think the worst like pulling fingernails out with pliers or hooking electrodes up to testicles. In the U.S. we have been able, up to this point, to hold our heads high and proclaim to the rest of the barbaric world that we don't torture. However, in light of recent discoveries, we did torture, and now are in the midst of deciding whether to continue torturing, which is something I find deeply disturbing.

Torture doesn't work. It is just that simple. While the thought of getting one of those al Qaeda bastards under water and having him cry for his mommy might bring a smile to many people's faces, the info that guy will spew while believing he is drowning is totally useless. Over 60 years of research has proven that when human beings are in imminent fear of losing their lives or facing severe pain, they will say anything to make it stop. In other words, torture doesn't work.

Torture also becomes a slippery slope. It's kind of like an abusive relationship. The guy doesn't start out punching you in the face, instead he starts by slowly telling you what you can and can't do to see if he can get away with it. You begin justifying it in your mind, kind of like the people in this country are doing with waterboarding; 'sure they think they are drowning, but they really aren't, it's just like that bad pool experience you had in the 7th grade'.

Next thing you know the abusive boyfriend slaps you, and you're going to leave, but he begs you to stay, and you justify with the typical 'he really didn't mean to do it.' Like we are doing right now with not prosecuting the people who okayed the torture and are evaluating torture techniques to figure out if they are really torture.

Finally, the abusive boyfriend is beating the shit out of you on a nightly basis, and you feel pathetic and stupid for staying, but will still look at your black eye, swollen lip, and mess of a nose, and say 'he loves me, I know he does'. This is the point where waterboarding gives way to testicle electrodes and pliers to the fingernails, or that magical moment where every country operates like a South American junta or Iran. In other words, human beings can justify anything if they are given enough time to think about it, so torture becomes a slippery slope.

The fact is right now people in my country are acting like children. We know torture is wrong, and it's bad, but we want to do it, so we are trying to use logic and morality to justify our desires to string someone up by their neck, strip them naked, and beat them with an electrical cord, but in the end, there is no justifying that behavior.

During the Bush years, it was anything goes, but now that reason and sanity have returned, we have to grow up and realize that letting banking institutions sell crap loans to working people is wrong, allowing politicians to be bought by wealthy corporations to act in the corporate interest is wrong, invading and occupying another country that poses no real threat to us just to gain oil interests is wrong, and using torture to aid that war for oil is very wrong.

We are the United States and we don't torture, because we are better than that. End of story.