At Saturday night’s Republican debate, moderators brought up waterboarding, provoking pro-torture responses from the candidates that were as characteristic as they were horrifying.
Donald Trump, as is his custom, was cartoonishly extreme in his response, suggesting that he would not only revive the practice but also, “Bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” The notoriously bloodthirsty Ted Cruz danced around the idea, opposing torture in speech while weaseling his way through its definition, drawing a line so fine it was functionally transparent between “enhanced interrogation” and “torture.” And Marco Rubio brought up the slightly more moderate rear by admitting that waterboarding was inhumane … while noting that Guantanamo detainees aren’t owed the same humanity that federal prisoners are.
Now, for some reason, I had thought that in the year 2016, the idea that we should not be torturing people must be a no-brainer — but apparently, judging by the candidates’ responses, it’s not. And this isn’t just a case of the Republican establishment misrepresenting conservatism, as they so often do — 59 percent of Americans approved of the CIA’s methods following the release of the Senate torture report approximately a year ago. That is a figure for which it would be completely wrong to place the blame entirely on the shoulders of Republicans, as Democrats, while less likely to be in support of torture, are hardly innocent. This is a nationwide problem — but for the moment, the people publicizing it are Republicans.
Let’s first attack Cruz’s argument, because it’s particularly weak: contrary to what he says, waterboarding, which induces the sensation of drowning, is torture. Not only that, but drawing a line between “torture” and “enhanced interrogation” is a semantic technicality at best. They are used to describe the same actions; the latter is simply designed to make us feel less guilty for our own brutality.
Trump, of course, is not exactly a national moral authority, but still, it was dismaying — if not at all surprising — to see him come out in favor of the single most un-American argument for torture: that because groups like the Islamic State or al-Qaeda have committed atrocities against us, we should feel justified in sinking to their level.
It is hypocritical — again, not surprising for Trump — to claim that he will “Make America Great Again” while promoting the idea that America should lower itself to torturing our enemies in revenge for their crimes. That is petty, cruel and not becoming of a nation as amazing as we in America purport to be. As Sen. John McCain, himself a victim of torture, said in an extremely elegant op-ed in 2011, Americans are “different, stronger and better than those who would destroy us.” The idea that we should, as Americans, resort to the same tactics that have been used against men like McCain out of a desire for vengeance is reprehensible, and shows a deep and pervasive lack of concern on Trump’s part for making us even the slightest bit greater than we are today.
As an American, I know that America can be — and should be — better than that. And I am ashamed that the frontrunner for the nomination of one of our major political parties is saying that we should back off of the principle that we should be better than our enemies because someone upset us.
Lastly, Rubio. He represents perhaps the most understandable pro-torture opinion in the debate that has been raging in this nation since it came out that the CIA had tortured people under the Bush administration.
Understandable, but no less wrong.
He argued that we were justified in using the techniques illuminated by the Senate torture report because we were obtaining information in order to prevent future terrorism. And he is not alone. Forty-nine percent of Americans' support for torture is qualified by the idea that we must be obtaining information from it. And 23 percent think that we obtain information from it often.
Here’s the thing: that’s not true. Scientists don't think it works. Interrogators themselves have agreed. The Senate torture report concludes that the CIA's “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not produce reliable counterterrorism information.
When under the sort of stress and pain that torture is intended to induce, even so-called “light” torture like waterboarding, detainees will indeed talk — but they don’t give us reliable information we can use against future terrorists. They give us anything, anything at all, to make us stop hurting them. This information is by no means dependable — often, the torture itself will ensure that, by inducing delusions and psychotic states.
It’s reasonable, though, that the average American might not know these things. Torture sounds like it would work. Entertainment media says it works. And it’s not like the average American has ever researched the efficacy of torture — why would they? For most Americans, torture will never be a part of our lives.
But the reason we have to care is this: Rubio doesn’t care. Rubio, a U.S. Senator who is on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which released the torture report, either did not read it or is deliberately ignoring its contents out of some sort of misplaced partisanship because the investigators who produced it were Democrats.
And really, if his constituency doesn’t know, why should he care? This is a democracy, and he’s representing the ignorance of the people. His constituents and, in the case of the debate, his voters, don’t know to keep him accountable on this issue because we’re falling for the media portrayal of torture, not paying attention to the disturbing reality of it.
The idea of torture is very satisfying to something vicious in us. Especially in the time after 9/11, America was scared and angry, and we gave into that fear by resorting to the practices detailed in the Senate torture report. By no means do I question the motives of the CIA at that time — they may not have done their due diligence with regards to research or oversight, but I have no doubt that their intentions were to maintain our national security.
Unfortunately, our attempts at that maintenance came at the price of torturing our detainees for counterterrorism information that we never got.
But it’s hard to feel sympathy for terrorists, in some ways, because of their crimes, and because of how angry they make us. So it might be difficult, as a nation, to show remorse for torturing them. If you — understandably — feel that way, however, consider this: at least 26 of the 119 people in the report were wrongly detained.
Accordingly, if it’s hard to feel bad about torturing the guilty, remember that we were also torturing the innocent.
Regardless of whether or not detainees are innocent or guilty, however, regardless of their citizenship or their affiliations or their beliefs, if torture doesn’t work — and it doesn’t — there is no moral question at stake. If we are not obtaining information to stop future attacks, and by most accounts we did not, to torture even the most heinous of terrorists is essentially to hurt someone for our own satisfaction.
That’s not acceptable, and it’s not something that we, as Americans, should condone.
(The full text of the approximately 600 pages of the Senate torture report released to the public.)