The title and excerpts are, again, from John Gray's Heresies. I had to go to the end of the article and check whether it had been written on April Fools' Day, but no. Tighten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Choice quotes:
We need to view the reintroduction of judicial torture as the next step in human progress.
We need to shed the belief that human rights are violated when a terrorist is tortured.[how do you know he's a terrorist before you torture him/her?]
In a truly liberal society, terrorists have an inalienable right to be tortured. This is what demonstrates the moral superiority of liberal societies over others, past and present.[again, written on Feb. 17, 2003 - not April 1]
In this article, Gray argues that torture warrants, like search warrants, should be legal (he also points out that technically torture is not unconstitutional in the US; I wonder if the white house administration reads this UK guy.) He claims that the abolition of torture made sense back in the days, but that it no longer does because, whereas back in the days torture was used to uphold arbitrary power,
today torture is used to defend free societies from attack by their enemies
[mmh...].
The scary part is that he goes on to say "The US will not rest until other states have have also adopted [this new regime of human rights]. " This was 2003, it's now 2006 and lots of stories are emerging regarding the outsourcing of terror onto other states, including the willful cooperation of certain European law enforcement agencies. Gray claims that since the US was able to convince the world of the new "pre-emptive strike" doctrine, that it can also pull this off. Think Rice.
The article ends with the following:
The world's finest liberal thinkers are applying themselves to the design of a modern regime of judicial torture. At a time when civilization is under daily threat, there can be no more hopeful sign.
We have different hopes, John, very different hopes.
There are generally-speaking three types of arguments against torture - (and for the most part they're the same variety as applies to anti-death penalty argumentation); and Gray doesn't convince me on either one of them.
A) It is immoral
B) It doesn't work (torture: the results are unreliable; death penalty: it does not act as a deterrent)
C) The process by which people are picked to whom it applies (the tortured, the killed by the penal system), is deeply flawed.
On any given day I probably would've just dismissed this article, said "Codswallop" as says the author of my current baby book, and moved on to prettier topics. But you see, I happen to work for an organization that fights for human rights. And I like to keep informed of things like Amnesty Intl's latest report on the use of torture by the US.
So should you have any time, even just time enough to read this blog, you should seriously skim through this well-crafted, humourous report. Humourous because cynical and smart. Also much better written than the Gray article.
Guantanamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power. It's magnificently researched. It points out the hilarious discrepancies between the State Department reports and the same government's doings. It is well worth it.
Keep your seat belts on for the read though, it is after all about abuse of executive power and humiliations and torture.
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