America's Willing Torturers

Over the past few years, as we have been debating torture and its place in America's intelligence policy, the words of Abraham Lincoln keep rolling through my mind:

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery," Lincoln said in 1865, "I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

I just replace "slavery" with "torture."

Echoing Lincoln, I confess a strong impulse to see waterboarding tried out personally on a few people arguing for it. For me, the urge to give torture's advocates a taste of their own medicine is a fleeting, shameful notion. But history says the question of "How far would I go?" has been all too real. And the answer is frightening.

In his landmark book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen argued that the grotesque atrocities of the Holocaust could not have been accomplished without the broad and even enthusiastic support of millions of average citizens who made the deaths of millions of others possible.

Goldhagen wrote,

"The German perpetrators of the Holocaust treated Jews in all the brutal and lethal ways that they did because, by and large, they believed that what they were doing was right and necessary."

"Right and Necessary." The very argument put forward for torturing terrorist suspects. Which of us would stop at the unthinkable if we were told that what we were doing was "right and necessary?" Especially if we are led to believe it works!

It's tempting to think that we would emerge as the exception to the rule if put to the test at Abu Ghraib prison or the Hotel Rwanda or next door to Anne Frank's family. I myself would like to think that I could be the good apple in the bad barrel.

Yet the work of such scholars as Philip Zimbardo does not bear out my naïve hope. Zimbardo is the creator of the now-notorious Stanford Prison Experiment in which students rapidly devolved into brutal guards in a mock prison scenario. Placed in a situation of uneven distribution of power, most of those in control impose their will to do harm. In a recent book, The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo wrote:

"Dehumanization is like a cortical cataract that clouds one's thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture and annihilation."

Zimbardo's work offers proof of how few of us can resist and actually rebel. His work is borne out by what we know of My Lai, Abu Ghraib, genocide in Africa, or any of the other all-too-frequent examples of people descending into voluntary barbarism. Vain self-flattery tells us that we would follow the lead of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mandela or any of the other models of resistance. Those who did attempt to resist, such as Sophie Scholl -- the young German student who tried to stand up to the Nazis -- or Hugh Thompson -- the helicopter pilot who stood in the way of the killing at My Lai -- are the rare exceptions to the rule -few and far between.

Still, we stand justified in asking our leaders to hold America to a higher standard -- to probe the decisions and decision-makers who led us to that darkened cell with its waterboards and bug boxes. But as we examine our leaders, each of us must hold ourselves to account as well. And as we do, recall it was also Lincoln who said,

"I hate slavery because it deprives the republican example of its just influence in the world -enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites -causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity."

Again, simply substitute "torture" for Lincoln's "slavery."

Neither has a place in a civilized America.

shorter version of this blog aired as a Commentary on Vermont Public Radio on Friday May 1.

Follow Kenneth C. Davis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kennethcdavis

Comments

[obviously]

I personally feel that there are two moral issues involved in this debate-One torture is wrong-Two our Countries moral responsibility to protect it's citizens. The reality is we have to talk about both these moral issues when we decide what we will and won't do. Just saying torture is wrong isn't realistic but neither is just doing anything to get information-So what are we suppose to do??? I keep hearing people saying water boarding is wrong-so how far is too far?????

[AnotherAndy]

Stanley Milgram's famous experiment on obedience to authority is relevant to this discussion. People will do horrible things quite willingly when told to do by an authority figure.

"Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

[Kenneth Davis]

Thank you for your comment. Yes, the Yale experiment is also very germane in this conversation. The old axiom "Question authority" is indeed appropriate. Unfortunately, as has been said in an entirely different context, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."
My point remains that even as we ask for an investigation, as individuals we must always ask if we would be the "willing torturers."
Thanks again for reading and commenting.

[Bobrobert]

Come on... we are all animals.

We are taught that we can do as we please.. all we need is money and power.

We cheat on income taxes, we speed on the highways, we cheat on our wives and we are never punished.

If you want a real experiment... you need to allow the participant the ability to draw blood by cutting off fingers and toes... skinning the people... actually seeing the damage they are doing.

Hearing folks scream doesn't cut it... it is flawed... we hear people scream all the time on tv.

The study was flawed big time... unless you allow the people to actually cause major phyical damage that they can see this type of study is useless.

[kevdanger]

To paraphrase the Vice President, who was a Senator at the time, " We do not torture. What part of that don't you get."
peace
kevin

[Danny Vigus]

Well done, I agree completely.

[Kenneth Davis]

Thanks for your interest.

[Buddy McCue]

Excellent article, Mr. Davis. I'd like to thank you for pointing these things out. I haven't read the book by Philip Zimbardo that you reference, but I'd like to now.

It seems to me that the idea of dehumanizing others is at the core of this whole issue. Can there be a thing more opposed to our country's democratic ideals? Dehumanization is fundamentally undemocratic.

[Kenneth Davis]

Thanks for your interest. The Zimbardo book is excellent.