America Tortures

Or rather, did torture during the Bush administration.

If you only read one article all year, read these excerpts from the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody, by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It will make your hair stand on end. But read it all the way through. Every citizen has a responsibility to know about—and react to, on a visceral level—what our government does to other human beings in the name of our national security.

I also recommend reading this follow up article by Mark Danner, also in the New York Review of Books. It makes a very strong case for addressing head-on the crux of the matter: determining just how well torture “works.” Luvh makes a strong argument that even indulging the idea that torture might “work” cedes too much ground in the debate. I agree with his sentiment. But I fear that if we don’t cede that ground, those who defend torture might prevail because they will be politically empowered following the next Al Qaeda attack, if and when it comes.

From the point of view of Al Qaeda, Bush’s torture policies were a godsend that continues to fuel their movement and help them recruit. And the best way to push America back towards those policies would be to show up the Obama administration as “weak,” unable to stop another attack. If we don’t soberly and seriously consider the question of what valuable information—if any—was attained through torture, the next attack (or even attempted attack) could be politically devastating for Obama and his anti-torture friends.