the Shackle Report

Before we send the torture issue off to some foreign dungeon to moulder in secret until its next political reprieve, can we please take a moment to detonate the main point that pro-torture advocates like the Weekly Standard’s Charles Krauthammer keep deploying in defense of the dark arts?

We’re talking about the ticking-bomb, here. That nuclear bomb set to go off in just a little while whose wherabouts somebody in our custody probably knows but feels reluctant to divulge. If we’re in a mad rush to find out where that horrible weapon is, the argument goes, and torture is the only way to get the information we need in time to save thousands of lives, shouldn’t we use it?

Well, no. Because wouldn’t some detainee who wishes us ill be most strongly inclined to lead our intelligence department on a wild-goose chase precisely when every moment is precious? By the time we find out (s)he’s lying. . .

Well, you see the logic of the situation. A real enemy, the sort of person reluctant to tell us where a dirty bomb is set to detonate, is the last person in the world whose torture-induced testimony you can trust in a crunch.

Those who have pondered the problem and still choose to believe otherwise must have some motive other than military utility for wanting to give the the executive branch the right to break another person’s will by force.

We have no way of knowing which of the various possible motives for advocating fruitless state cruelty is at work in each individual case: Power itself? The power to implement a particular agenda? Kink? Re-enactment of childhood trauma? A desire to transcend the limited power of the individual through identification with an all-powerful state? A nostalgic yearning for the feeling of safety one had as an infant when protected by benevolent parents who seemed to hold the power of life and death in their hands? The possibilities are too numerous and subtle to attach to torture-friendly political players with any confidence of accuracy. But still, it’s useful to note who falls into this category, and we are grateful to the torture debate for having amplified the ticking of their minds so that we might locate them in time.

Hey, we won. If by “we” you mean the majority of Americans who just somehow couldn’t fit condoning torture into their personal profiles.

Yes, facing a flat-out rebellion in the House as well as the Senate, our president has finally capitulated to Senator John McCain. No more cruel and degrading treatment — as defined in military field manuals — of detainees,. No more Fed-Exing interrogation subjects to secret Eastern European prisons or Egyptian torture chambers. Maybe.

Now we can hold our heads up while trying to wiggle out of whatever it is we’re fighting in Iraq: Instability? People who hate democracy? People who are uncomfortable seeing women dressed in scanty clothing out in public? People who hate the feeling of their faction suddenly being out of power? People upset about being invaded? People who feel exploited when foreign business that pay low wages and few taxes take over their country’s largest industries? People who would prefer that the world’s second-largest oil supply be under the control of Islamic fundamentalists? People with nothing better to do? Whatever.

I already miss the moral simplicity of the torture issue, and the way it winnowed out the compassionate conservatives from. . . well, from those whose compassion is so highly selective, most of us would probably call it something else, if we thought about it hard enough.

Anyway, break out the champagne. As of Dec 16th, we’re not torturers anymore. The nightmare is over. If only.