Torture and Pregnancy

A large mural in the Tower of London depicts a naked man facing a festive crowd on Tower Hill gathered for whatever pleasure can be found in watching him be hideously tortured, his body burned and mutilated alive and finally dismembered for display in various cities as evidence of the monarch's authority and power. It's a scene of utter degradation. I looked for the man with the pointy beard, he was surely there, but the faces were too indistinct. Ironically, a few miles to the north, Shakespeare was writing "Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."



After 9/11, an understandably panicked American government led by an inexperienced president to whom nuance was equivalent to weakness, let torture become a part of America's fight against Al Quaeda. He was poorly advised by people anxious to tell him what he wanted to hear, or to encourage his "cowboy" attitude, and he was unable to discriminate about the advise given to him.

There is no place for torture in American policy. It is a barbaric practice of a bygone era of which most nations who once used torture to enforce a monarch's control are not proud. At the foundation of America, various rights and freedoms were guaranteed to prevent the abuse of power to which we descended after 9/11, for the Founding Fathers knew that executive power was to be feared and that "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

There must never be an MOS for torture. The idea of American soldiers, those honored and sturdy, freckled faced farm boys from Kansas who won WW II, engaged in torture is an affront to everything that is American. We cannot be a great shining city on a hill and practice torture any more than we can claim to be a unique and wonderful, historic experiment in governance with notions that the president can do whatever he wishes in a time of emergency, including torture. We became a nation because we were fundamentally repulsed by the idea of any man or woman having such enormous and cruel power.

I can hear a conservative reader snickering at my naivete, but a recent book authored by Charles Fried, a very conservative former solicitor general of the United States under President Reagan, and his father a law professor, expressed very similar sentiments. Fried, the younger, who graduated from my college a couple of years after me, differed from his father in only one material way. Fried, the elder, felt that the Bush Administration's sins regarding torture were so egregious that in order to restore the nation's honor, they needed to be clearly identified and those responsible punished. I understand why President Obama decided not to drag up this dreadful stuff, but it was a serious mistake. Republicans, who impeached president Clinton for his reprehensible sexual adventures, wouldn't have hesitated a minute had the situation been reversed. Sex sullied President Clinton's personal honor; torture besmirches America's honor and as of today, no one has has admitted to the disgraceful decisions involved or been convicted of any misdeed, let alone punished. On the contrary every effort has been made to justify torture and belittle the "timid souls" who condemn it. I am pleased to say that group includes me.

The Frieds made clear in their lawyerly analysis what any thoughtful person understands instinctively: torture is very seldom effective and situations wherein torture might save the country are exceedingly rare, contrary to the TV series, "24" which appeared to legitimatize torture once a week. My belief is that there are no situations that warrant torture and no disasters to be avoided as horrible as the one that destroys our national personna, and everything we stand for, while concurrently taking us back 500 years in the progress of civilization. A democratic nation can no more use anonymous torture just occasionally, than a woman can be a little bit pregnant.