Torture’s slippery slope

We are now confronted with the odd sight of an American president and vice president fighting for the right to torture. It is a crude encore to the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, which was a coup for neither the country in general nor Republicans in particular. This entire narrative is a tragedy, a continuation of the fantasy not only of American moral invincibility, but of the inevitable, God-directed rightness of our foreign policy.

It has always struck me as interesting that the revelations of prisoner abuse at the American-run detention centers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo elicited more horror among citizens of other countries than it did here at home. Some Americans even cheered on the exertions of the torturers (aka American freedom fighters). I recall one pointed letter to a newspaper, in which the writer commented, “If torture is what it takes [to get the information we need], so be it.”

It has long been pleasant poetry that Americans are somehow above dirty pool and foul play. And torture? It was thought to be the modus operandi of Nazis, fascists, and other barbarians. To even suggest that Americans would so soil their hands bordered on treason.

But here we are. Not only have Americans indulged themselves by creating their own private Spanish Inquisitions, but they have done so with verve and alacrity, so cock sure of the insularity of their netherworld that they recorded their human rights abuses on film.

The confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general put the imprimatur on the torturers’ violations, for his soft take on tormenting human beings (President Bush himself referred to them as “folks,” so they must have some redeeming qualities), allowed them to seize the Nuremberg defense of simply “following orders.” Mr. Gonzales, a lap dog whose only wish as presidential counsel was to be acknowledged with the occasional executive milkbone, had fought briskly to revise the definition of torture. It was he who referred to the tenets of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.” At his confirmation hearing, under scathing cross-examination from the Senate panel, he finally found the words necessary to denounce torture, but he did it with the passion of a man reading the ingredients on a box of breakfast cereal.

Ah, yes, it can happen here. Americans have shown themselves to be, in many ways, a chosen people, but we are not an exempt people. There exists among our own citizens the potential to play out personal frustrations and regrets and fantasies on others. The only prerequisites are the proper context (“war,” concocted or otherwise, does nicely) and a wink and nod from superiors. Once those seeds are planted, the weed grows apace.

About 10 years ago a book was published in which the author described an incident of torture. The book was “Corelli’s Mandolin”; the time was World War II; and here is how the author, Louis de Berni?res, presented the scene of a Greek wannabe Communist revolutionary being ordered to commit his first act of torture, of an elderly man:

[They] propelled an emaciated old man into the sunlight, where he stood trembling and blinking, naked to the waist. Hector handed Mandras a length of knotted rope, and, pointing to the old man, said, “Beat him.”

Mandras looked at Hector in disbelief, and the latter glared at him ferociously. “If you want to be with us, you’ve got to learn to administer justice. This man has been found guilty. Now beat him.”

It was loathsome, but it was not impossible to beat a collaborator. He struck the man once with the rope, lightly, out of deference for his age, and Hector impatiently exclaimed, “Harder, harder. What are you? A woman?” He struck the old man once more, a little harder. “Again,” commanded Hector.

It was easier at each stroke. In fact it became exhilaration. It was as if every rage from the earliest year of childhood was welling up inside him, purging him, leaving him renewed and cleansed. The old man, who had been yelping and jumping sideways at every blow, spinning and cowering, finally threw himself to the ground, whimpering piteously, and Mandras suddenly knew that he could be a god.

The taste for torture, if not innate, is surely easily acquired. It is the ultimate slippery slope. All it takes is a sense of self-righteousness, the acquiescence of leadership, and the belief that no one is watching. The United States has provided all three ingredients and now has a witches’ brew on its hands, the cauldron aggressively tended by our own head of state and his minions.

A country gets the leaders that it deserves.

Robert Klose teaches at University College of Bangor and frequently contributes essays to The Christian Science Monitor.