We are supposed to feel bad for Jack Bauer, the lead character on FOX's hit show "24." Only he and a handful of his colleagues, it seems, have the moral strength necessary to do what has to be done. While Senators whine and his superiors wring their hands about what is "right," Bauer acts and saves the nation.
What this means - and has meant for more than six seasons of "24" - is that Bauer is a not-so reluctant torturer. He beats up the bad guys because, as he has said so many times, "there is no other way."
The reality is that there are more reliable and effective ways. Resorting to torture isn't heroic, it's stupid. Reliance on it has resulted in strategic mistakes and has made the nation less safe. The torture chorus has yet to document a single instance of a "but for" success, and that refusal looks more and more like a criminal cover-up.
I taught interrogation and the law of war for 18 years to U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine interrogators. The truth is that torture is just as likely to lead to false information or no information, not solid intelligence. History is replete with victims who have refused to talk or lied or died under torture. American torture has killed or addled suspects who might have provided vital intelligence if interrogated humanely. One problem with TV fiction is that viewers assume that if Jack Bauer can break some fingers and crack the case in an hour, anyone could.
Unfortunately that is exactly the message that some have gleaned from this program. After watching torture work over and over again, some junior soldiers (and, sadly, some very senior policy makers who ought to know better) have copied the tactics they have seen on "24" and other action programs, according to evidence gathered by journalists and Human Rights First. Military educators have also reported that "24" is "one of the biggest problems" they have in their classrooms.
If "24" is going to continue to show so much torture - they have shown 89 scenes of torture in their first six seasons - I would like to see abusive interrogation techniques portrayed in a more realistic and nuanced fashion so that people do not walk away from the program with the impression that this stuff works. What if an episode focused around false information that was gathered through torture, for example?
I understand that Human Rights First brought Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the Dean of the Academic Board, US Military Academy at West Point, to Hollywood to talk to Kiefer Sutherland and the Executive Producers of the program. "I told them to stop showing torture in a way that suggests torture is effective," Finnegan told The New Yorker after the visit. To date, the producers of "24" have ignored Finnegan's request.
In Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Iraq, life has too often imitated art. It is particularly regrettable that Jack Bauer, in his new season, is shown persuading a "naïve" FBI agent that torture is the ultimate weapon in democracy's arsenal. After all, it was the FBI whose truly expert interrogators were aghast at what they saw at Guantanamo and who were finally quarantined by the Director lest they be implicated in war crimes. As the 7th season begins, I am joining Human Rights First in asking the producers to stop showing torture so irresponsibly.
Please join me and other military leaders in asking them to do the right thing.
For a look at what really works in the interrogation booth, I recommend a look at Matthew Alexander's book, "How to Break a Terrorist" or Eric Maddox's book "Mission: Blacklist #1." These interrogators - acting separately - developed the intelligence that led to al Zarqawi (the former head of Al Qaeda in Iraq) and Saddam Hussein. As their books show, what works in the field is patient interrogation tactics that depend on brains not brutality.
Brigadier General David R. Irvine is a retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School. He currently practices law in Salt Lake City, Utah.
One of the key provisions,
was not allow bad behavior to triumph.
Not allowing torture to work.
I would like to broker a deal between "24" and the US military. They'll start showing torture as a useless, sick, sadistic act, in return for military recruiting ads that feature footage of the thousands of Iraqi civilians that got ripped through in order to get at one dictator, formerly propped up by the US.
when they talk about small government they mean government with unlimited powers- just that it will not have progressive taxation. Government with unlimited posers to control the bad guys and the poor for the benefit of the good guys and the rich.
There is emerging scientific evidence to the contrary.
Time spent in front of a TV screen watching anything causes long-lasting if not permanent physical changes in a toddler's brain.
Our expectations in a mate---appearance, earning power, etc---are influenced and skewed toward the unrealistic by the sheer number of images of unusually good-looking people of the opposite sex we are exposed to---and most of those we see on television.
Children who watch a violent cartoon engage in more violent play in the period immediately following the program.
Read what acclaimed security and human violence expert Gavin DeBecker has to say about the influence of television on the criminal mind.
So don't tell me "24" and other shows glorifying war and torture aren' major dings to our collective American consciousness and flies in the ointment of our self-image as a good and fair people.
I suspect that many have a knee-jerk response to anything critical of violence in the media because they are wary of morality legislation. Of course, as always education is the key.
What they don't understand is that the general is not blaming television, he is simply holding it accountable. If people knew how to read, they'd know the difference.
You are so right, also. I also feel a major reason so many Americans have an unrealistic view of the natural world because all they know of it comes from the Discovery channel.
Where is the "emerging scientific evidence?" There was a statement by, IIRC, the American Psychiatric Association that violent video games caused violence, which was based on not evidence but on a general sentiment among those who signed it. In one case I researched on video game violence, a leading researcher in the field cited numerous studies which he admitted did not show a causal link, but claimed that the number of studies--rather than their results--proved the link.
Studies show that violent or exciting entertainment elevates adrenaline levels, not that it causes kids to act out the fantasies for real. When parents were worried that their kids were imitating the Power Rangers, there was no spate of Power Ranger-related beatings. It was just kids playing.
The evidence is not there. What we're seeing is just part of the endless cycle: The stuff *I* grew up with, that my parents mistakenly thought was destroying the moral fabric of the country, was wholesome, but the stuff *kids today* like is *really* destroying the moral fabric of the country.
Thankyou for setting the record straight... at what I take to be your earliest opportunity to do so.
Its a daily slugfest here on HuffPost between the hardheaded minority of torture-apologists and the rest of us... I'm quite sure there are many, many others here who will warmly welcome your authoritative words as well.
24 needs to be cleaned up... or shut down. Torture is a moral depravity... an obscenity. I can think of no other obscenity which is not banned from television. First Amendment rights do not protect obscenity.
And the writing REQUIRES a suspension of belief. This is common, as any film school student.
But I sleep better at night knowing the Real World has people like Brigadier Gen. David R. Irvine. Thank you, for all the work you do, General, sir.
And thank god, YOU know how stupid it is to torture prisoners. You might was start picking up people at random in out military and torture them. Because the enemy will damn sure to us what we to them......and nothing LESS!
Absolutely.
I am sorry, but I totally lost all respect for Keifer Sutherland because of his appearance in this abomination of a show. Reports are that he personally does not believe in the actions he portrays. Yet his presence as the fictional Bauer is being used as a guiding star for the torture fans. This is the sickest form of hypocrisy.
best,
DenverJJ
http://writerswheel.blogspot.com/
There is no such thing as "limited" torture. There is no such thing as "reviewed and De-Con'd (de-constitutionalized) torture" -- which I take the writer to mean something like "squared with constitutional principles," or "kept within the bounds of constitutional guidelines."
Torture is well-understood. There is no ambiguity or debate -- domestically or internationally -- about what is, and what isn't torture... though the Bush Administration and their stooges in Congress tried to sell the notion that there is. That was a transparent, after-the-fact (after the commission of crime fact) "uh-oh, uh-oh" CYA move.
There is a big, very VERY bright line already in the law against torture: IF an act _IS_ torture THEN it _IS_ illegal... "top-of-the-charts" illegal, according to both U.S. domestic criminal law and international criminal law. A conviction for torture can result in the death penalty.
There is no unique and moral American version of torture.... no magical transmutation that occurs if done by an American. Depraved, sadistic violence does not become any less morally reprehensible AND illegal. There is no "limited" torture. Done by an American, it is exactly the same ugly, depraved, morally reprehensible crime.
But people do not want to think of themselves as rooting for perverted criminal sadists... even if they actually are.
There is also a strong difference between say, trying to get information out of someone who honestly feels as though he has nothing to lose (IE a hardened terrorist or a loyal soldier) and the people who Jack usually ends up torturing (or at the very least threatening) which tend to be mercenary types with little backbone who didn't expect to be caught. Is it outlandish to believe that someone who was only in it for the money would break when faced with his imminent demise? Probably not.
There have also been characters with which torture had no effect in the past of the show. One example was a terrorist in season two who refused to cooperate no matter what. The only way Jack was able to get to him was staging a false death of his family one at a time (he was willing to talk to save his son). Torture is not presented as some kind of end all technique that is always successful, far from it. Bauer himself has been tortured multiple times (once he actually died from it temporarily) and never has given anything up. It has been shown to be only effective on the weak willed, which is probably more or less the case.
Cite a single factual example of the "ticking time bomb" scenario.
There isn't one other than in fiction. Torture is illegal, immoral and ineffective.