TRUMP ON TORTURE

Now that President Trump has said that he might send more suspected terrorists to Guantanamo, reinstate the CIA's black sites--prisons in foreign countries into which people can be "disappeared" and tortured--and now that he has said that he absolutely believes that torture works and that if his advisers want to torture, he'll "work toward that end," all of us who refuse to condone torture need to speak out against it once again.

Here's what I believe about torture:

1. Torture in any guise is morally wrong, repugnant, and soul-destroying, not only to the victims but also to the torturers. Whenever and wherever it has been used, it has left a stain that lasts for centuries. We still recoil at the horrors inflicted on suspected witches in medieval Europe, the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition, or the tortures inflicted on "enemies of the state" in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Calling torture "enhanced interrogation" does not make it any less repugnant or reprehensible.

Institutionalized Torture at Abu Ghraib

Credit: Wikipedia

2. It doesn't work. Under torture people will admit to anything and everything. Although proponents of torture always trot out the tired argument, torture cannot be justified as necessary to elicit potentially lifesaving intelligence. When a state institutionalizes torture, it is almost always to  terrorize and control its own population or some demonized subgroup. 

3. It's an unhappy commentary on human nature, but both history and decades of psychological research have shown that it's remarkably easy to use authority, peer pressure and institutional norms to turn ordinary people into torturers. 

4. Therefore we need a strong moral stance, laws and positive leadership to prevent torture from becoming institutionalized and "normalized," especially in times of uncertainty and fear. If our elected leaders fail in this vital role, or worse yet, conspire to lead our nation to once again practice and justify torture, it's up to all of us to resist in every way we can.

It seems to me that torture is such a gross violation of our shared humanity that it is not an issue on which anyone can remain neutral or silent.

APA backs out of the torture business

 It took several years of grass-roots advocacy and a rare vote by the entire membership, but the American Psychological Association (APA) have finally bowed out of the dark realms where torture is carried out.

 Following a long series of revelations about how American psychologists have wittingly or unwittingly abetted the Bush administration’s programme of coercion and abuse of prisoners in the war on terror, activists within the APA forced a ballot on an unequivocal anti-torture resolution.

 The mail-in balloting closed on 15 September. Nearly 60 percent of the 15,000 APA members who voted supported the resolution, which will take effect no later than the next APA meeting in August, 2009.

 The heart of the resolution forbids APA psychologists from working in settings where “persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.”

 By taking this stance, even belatedly, the APA have not only joined other professional associations worldwide in condemning torture and prohibiting their members from abetting it, but have taken the right side in the long historical struggle to end torture.

 In 1563, the Dutch physician Johann Weyer published his great work, On the illusions of demons and on spells and poisons, in which he argued forcefully against the witch-hunting madness sweeping through Europe and condemned the use of the torture to force suspected witches to confess to satanic acts and name others.

 It’s no coincidence that Weyer, a physician who believed in the Hippocratic admonition, “First, do no harm,” was one of the few voices of humanity and reason in a fear-wracked time not entirely unlike our own.

 The APA could have taken this stance earlier, as did the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, and still need to implement the resolution.

 Still, they deserve praise for joining the ranks of true healers throughout history who have refused to be associated with the practice of torture, however strongly advocated by the authorities of the day.

Robert Adler