Islands in the Clickstream:
High Time for Torture
Torture is all the rage these days, getting plenty of ink in the liberal
press, as if it’s something new. It’s not. We have been torturing one another
for centuries. Our intelligence professionals have perfected the means and the
methods and have created opportunities for learning how to do it right.
Torture, from beating, lacerating, electrocuting, raping and breaking
individuals in hell holes to quietly standing aside while genocide takes
place, is ho hum. By treating it as something special, the discussion of
appropriate policies governing torture has been distorted.
Hence this essay to right that wrong.
First of all, torture is widely practiced. We Americans developed a very good
manual for torturing “leftist rebels,” i.e. anyone who opposes “free trade”
and organizes themselves enough to be a threat, and we trained people in how
to do it. I spoke to someone recently who had wandered into torture training
classes complete with chalk diagrams on the blackboard and arrows pointing out
pressure points. I talked to an interrogator from Guantanamo who smiled and
shook his head when presented with government statements about the humane
treatment of “enemy combatants.” So let’s stop talking about Abu Ghraib and
related “atrocities,” as they are called by the leftwing media, as if they are
anomalous. Atrocities are not anomalous. They’re as common as fumbles when the
Packers are playing.
Secondly, despite a significant number of voices in the chorus proclaiming
that torture is not a good interrogation technique (let’s face it, when the
electricity is coursing through your genitals and the man in the black hood
asks if you want some more, you’ll say anything to staunch the juice; and the
best interrogators say they prefer what is called the “Scharff method” after
the sophisticated NAZI interrogator Hans Joachim Scharff who showed how
empathy, understanding, and patience often turned the most recalcitrant
captive into a good source of information) despite all that, torture must be
good for more than recreation because even those who say it’s ineffective
continue to authorize, execute, and cover up its use.
Now, part of that may be the “fun factor.” Totally dominating another human
being can be fun. One source explained that torture has long been practiced in
other countries with Americans as coaches (to use the current buzzword), if
not participants. He named a lot of countries where we did this, including El
Salvador, Cambodia, Chile, Iran, South Vietnam, Guatemala, Argentina, Israel,
and Egypt. We could double that list, at least, with countries in our own
hemisphere (the Monroe Doctrine gives us permission to do that, and now the
Monroe Doctrine is applied to the world and beyond, we apply it to space all
the way out to the asteroid belt). For some, torture is just work. But for
others, torture is fun.
Take the Uzbeks, for example. One source with a long history in military
intelligence said it was a novelty when the Uzbeks learned that one purpose of
torture might be to elicit information.
But I digress. The point I want to make is that we have been engaged in
torturing people directly or through proxies, here, there and everywhere, for
so long, that torture ought to commend itself to all thinking individuals as
an appropriate methodology for (1) getting the truth out of people quickly and
efficiently, and (2) disciplining unruly children and adults alike, as is
when is.
I propose that we apply the lessons of torture in ways consistent with our
actual practice, not with the cover stories we invent so the squeamish can
sleep at night.
Torture should be used first in the basements of police stations, in prisons,
and in schools, places where we have nearly total control over prisoners,
inmates and students now. Torture has been in fact routinely practiced in many
of those places and when, for example, white police attach wires to a black
man and let the good times flow, subsequent protestations are widely ignored.
So this extension of current practice would be a seamless splice.
Once the efficacy of torture in those environments has become clear to a
desensitized population, it can be extended into homes and businesses where
discipline is a must but achieving it efficiently has been denied to
executives and parents. (Desensitization training is a must. When the CIA
trained assassins for assignment to embassies where they would be ready at
hand, they were compelled to watch hours of atrocities, their heads
immobilized and eyelids propped open, until they no longer had an emotional
response to killings, mutilation and so on.)
Imagine that you ask your child what they’ve been looking at on the Internet
and you get an unsatisfactory answer. Now all you can do is shut them up in a
room with a computer, a television, a cell phone with conference calling, all
the comforts of home. But if you could take them down to the basement and wire
up the auto battery or break the little darling’s arm and hang them from it
for a few days as we do in Iraq, can you imagine how quickly you would know
what Junior was browsing?
Or imagine an executive faced with employees who threaten litigation on some
politically correct mini-point of contention every time they’re told to work.
Instead of having to listen to that smarty-pants voice, you just tie their
hands to opposing cubicles and shred that designer blouse with twenty or
thirty bloody lashes like they do in Afghanistan. Do that a couple of times,
making sure the rest of the crew has to watch, and you’ll have a hard-working
corps of workers with the right attitude in no time.
The truth is, people are overly squeamish about torture. We need to ramp up
public exposure to what we really do and get people used to the sounds and
smells. Those pictures from Abu Ghraib were well-scrubbed. They only showed
men being abused in mostly passive humiliating ways. Pictures of women being
raped and the sounds of children being sodomized were locked away. Trials of
low-level personnel were quick and quiet while responsible policy makers were
ignored. For heaven’s sake, it required a trained physician going through
autopsy reports to discover that “natural death” upon “natural death” was a
cover for torturing people to death. That’s inexcusable. I think we Americans
have stronger stomachs than that and the collusion between media and military
to sanitize the truth is inappropriate. If they can take it, hell, so can we!
You would be surprised how many people would enjoy it. Listen to the words of
a medic who described his feelings while beating prisoners during service in
Iraq: “You get a burning in your stomach, a rush, a feeling of hot lead
running through your veins, and you get a sense of power. ... Imagine wearing
point-blank body armor, an M-16 and all the power in the world, and the
authority of God. That power is very attractive.” (quoted from the
forthcoming book by Dr. Stephen Miles, Oath Betrayed: Military Medicine and
the War on Terror).
The lessons of torture are matter-of-fact. Torture is widespread, obviously
effective or we wouldn’t use it so much, and to many practitioners either a
rationalized, neutral event or something they really like. Adapting torture to
more general use in society would quickly pay dividends. Students would stop
mouthing off, employees would stop suing bosses, suspects would confess, and
children would obey their parents.
I think it is high time we use torture whenever and wherever. Initial
opposition will quickly drown in a sea of screams and resisters will learn
that the fact of resistance marks them for the next session. We have the
tools, we have the techniques, we have lacked only the will to do what works
to straighten out our bent society once and for all.
I highly commend torture to everybody.
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Islands in the Clickstream is an intermittent column written
by Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions of
technology and the ultimate concerns of our lives. Comments welcome.
Richard Thieme is an author and professional speaker focused on the
deeper implications of technology, religion, and science for twenty-first
century life. A collection of his work, Islands in the Clickstream, was
published by Syngress Publishing in 2004.
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