To the memory of the women and men of the resistance, French and foreign, victims of the German Nazis and of the Vichy Government, tortured by the Gestapo in these buildings.
—

A simple, small plaque on the side of a building in Grenoble, France.

No, I am not invoking Godwin’s Law in the discussion of torture. I am pointing out the historical context of torture, which regimes have used it, which regimes have rejected it.

During the Cold War, anyone who was not a fervently true believing communist had no doubt that the Soviet Union used torture routinely.

The Soviet Union posed a threat not only of the annihilation of dozens to hundreds of cities in the United States, but arguably could have destroyed civilization as we know it.

Yet, we felt no need to publicly “reserve the right to torture” our enemies.

I strongly suspect that despite the capitalist window-dressing that the People’s Republic of China has put on their regime, torture is also a part of their repertoire, and my suspicions are not without some foundation.

Is this the company we want to be aligned with?

During the 1991 Gulf War, Americans were outraged at the broadcast images of downed pilots who had obviously been severely beaten.

Did we say we needed to treat Iraqi prisoners in the same fashion in retaliation?

What is torture? The definition I use is any act perpetrated upon a person in our power that if performed upon one of our troops would create the outrage that is so often displayed when our troops are treated with anything less than respect.

I have read in more than one place that we, the United States, should not state that we will never use torture because it gives our enemies some kind of advantage, knowing that we will treat them well they have no incentive to give information when interrogated. To wit, we need to make them fear us so they will cooperate. Our enemies supposedly have no regard for life, so we should have no regard for them.

The number of different ways this is wrong is staggering, yet reasonable people are presenting this argument that not only should we not say that we will not torture, but that we should torture.

Torture is wrong.

Torture is immoral.

Regardless of the “status” of those in our custody, whether “enemy combatant” or legitimate prisoner of war. The label we apply does not change the fundamental immorality of abusing those in our power. Labels are merely used to dehumanize those we hate to provide some comfort for our consciences. Our enemies dehumanize us, which allows them and their fellow-travelers to perpetrate the inhuman and inhumane acts that comprise their signature.

Do we have to become them to defeat them, when the threat they pose to us and our civilization is far, far less than that from the former Soviet Union?

Every time we torture someone (and yes, “waterboarding” and other acts we have deliberately performed on persons in our control do fit my definition of torture), we lower ourselves another notch towards the level of our enemies.

To put it simply, we are in danger of displaying exactly the immorality and disregard for life that we say are the characteristics of those we label “the terrorists.”

They kill those they think of as their enemies without regard to any other considerations because they have chosen to dehumanize those they oppose. They behead those they regard as their enemies as they would an animal, because they choose not to see them as human.

Now, some are saying we should torture those we regard as our enemies to put fear into them.

I won’t spell out the conclusion for you, but I urge you to move outside your comfort-box of “we are the good-guys” because our nature is shown by our actions, just as we claim that the actions of our enemies shows their nature.

Do the math.

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