
How U.S. Torture Left Legacy of Damaged Minds - endswapper
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/world/cia-torture-guantanamo-bay.html
======
kafkaesq
And it isn't just the first-line victims who've been damaged -- it's all of
us.

Through either silent complicity -- or simply feeling too weak and impotent to
resist. As Vaclav Havel said in his famous New Year's address to the nation,
in early 1990:

 _But all this is still not the main problem. The worst thing is that we live
in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became
used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to
believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. ...
We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an
unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. In other words, we are all
- though naturally to differing extents - responsible for the operation of the
totalitarian machinery. None of us is just its victim. We are all also its co-
creators._

~~~
beloch
You speak as if the damage is past-tense. It's still being done! The U.S. may
have ended the policy of openly torturing people, but they're still proudly
assassinating people in foreign countries with drones. This is a practice
that's really going to bite the U.S. in the ass one day. Sooner or later, some
other nation or terrorist group is going to start killing people they don't
like on U.S. soil with drones, and the U.S. will have no moral high ground
from which to complain!

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
> The U.S. may have ended the policy of openly torturing people, but they're
> still proudly assassinating people in foreign countries with drones.

That's a bit different. Arguably, that's taking place in a state of war. Also,
what makes you think our complaining actually requires moral high ground?
Complaints are made from a high ground made of power, not morality.

~~~
beloch
Drone strikes are taking place in countries like Pakistan and Yemen, where
there is no official war with the U.S.. Their success rate is terrible[1].
They miss their intended target most of the time[2]. Thousands of civilians,
including hundreds of children, have been killed[3].

I'm not sure what you meant by saying complaints are made from a high ground
of power. Plenty of powerless people in Yemen and Pakistan have complained are
are complaining. Perhaps you meant that complaints are actually _listened_ to
and addressed when made from a position of power? This is true. However,
sometimes complaints can be made from a position of weakness and be listened
to when made from a moral high ground and massively supported by the public.
e.g. Gandhi's passive resistance movement.

My entire point is that, when other actors are able to strike targets on U.S.
soil with drones, power is the only thing that the U.S. will have to stop
them, and it might not be adequate. Drones are going to be very difficult to
control in a few years. The U.S. has opened a Pandora's box by using them in
such fashion. Heck, the U.S. government has behaved so outrageously over the
last decade that U.S. citizens are likely to blame their own government when
drone strikes happen on U.S. soil!

[1][http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/15/90-of-
people...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/15/90-of-people-
killed-by-us-drone-strikes-in-afghani/)

[2][http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-
obam...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-obama-
administrations-drone-strike-dissembling/473541/)

[3][https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/dron...](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/drones-
graphs/)

~~~
MawNicker
> Heck, the U.S. government has behaved so outrageously over the last decade
> that U.S. citizens are likely to blame their own government when drone
> strikes happen on U.S. soil!

Nah. We respect Hanlon's Dodge. Our government is a tool of the shadow
government. It's a dirty mark on Americans just like the Jihad is a dirty mark
on Muslims. Balkanize all the things!

------
rdtsc
> Americans have long debated the legacy of post-Sept. 11 interrogation
> methods,

It is depressing to live in a supposed civilized society where torture is a
valid topic of debate.

Often I don't, but here I agree with Slavoj Zizek:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B57bdjIxfQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B57bdjIxfQ0)

He starts talking about Zero Dark Thirty movie, and then talks about how
torture debate is normalized, and how there is something disturbing about
that. He posits torture should be a topic like rape: nobody will take anyone
seriously if they want to debate the benefits of rape. That person is
automatically excluded from the conversation as a disgusting idiot.

But here we are discussing and debating the benefits of torture. The hope is
one day, torture will be the same, anyone who wants to even discuss its
benefits is automatically a candidate for the looney bin.

~~~
vacri
Not to mention that experts in the field of interrogation have openly stated
that the 'ticking time bomb' situation simply never exists, and that's the one
that's _always_ used to defend torture.

------
dandare
The saddest part is that by torturing few the US triggered the torture of many
many more. Egypt, Turkey, Venezuela and almost everybody else: why hold back
when the US do it? When the good ones do it? Torture is mainstream, morally
acceptable and maybe even efficient - why else would the western democracies
do it? By torturing their foes the US damaged the whole world for decades,
maybe centuries to come.

~~~
ams6110
As even a casual review of history will reveal, torture is something that
humans are prone to doing. It has always happened and probably always will.
Other than giving up the moral high ground, I doubt what the US does or
doesn't do in this regard has much impact on what despotic regimes do.

~~~
dandare
It's not black or white, many regimes (imagine Turkey) are more democratic
than despotic and the question is not whether torture is the official
government policy but rather whether a local policeman in remote village
thinks it is an appropriate thing to do when investigating a mobile phone
theft. 99% of torture happens in countries where it is officially illegal [my
guess].

------
obmelvin
I am absolutely shocked by this 'They knew that the methods inflicted on
terrorism suspects would be painful, shocking and far beyond what the country
had ever accepted. But none of it, they concluded, would cause long lasting
psychological harm.'

How could one reasonably think that torture such as leaving someone
suffocating at the bottom of a well would not leave lasting effects?

~~~
kafkaesq
It's one of the signature features of the totalitarian apparatus -- cognitive
dissonance.

It's what enabled, for example, members of the _Einsatzgruppen_ to believe
that it was OK to shoot young children at the front of the ravines and pits,
because they'd be "better off" without their mothers to raise them. Not
exactly congruent to what the CIA's operatives have been doing. But still,
there's that mechanism of the brain saying, "This isn't _really_ hurting them,
so it's OK if I participate in it."

------
rdiddly
I suppose someone has to do the follow-on work, years later, reporting the
actual consequences as they played out. Yet two things about this particular
piece infuriate me: 1) Most of us probably could've foreseen, and did foresee,
that there would be human consequences to this shitty evil program. Even those
who didn't have a particularly vivid mental picture of that, could still tell
it was a shitty evil program. So to have it reported as news now is like,
"Wow, no shit?" 2) The ones doing the reporting in this case were complicit in
supporting the Bush administration in these very efforts back then, so they're
now deploring that in which they participated. When you do that, it is
generally accompanied by an APOLOGY. Also see my very similar comment from 3
weeks ago on the Washington Post suddenly betraying Snowden:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12527065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12527065)

------
cryoshon
great, now the mouthpiece of the state department is finally coming out
against torture, long after they cheerled for the entry into the war which
provided a stage for such torture. bravo.

the fact of the matter is that we're long overdue for prosecution of americans
who supported, knew of, trained, or tortured others. obama cut them a free
pass, which makes him complicit.

heavyhanded sentences against the perpetrators (highest leadership included)
will do much to rehabilitate america's ruined reputation.

my prediction: moral cowardice among our government and citizens will continue
because the effort of cleansing evil isn't understood to be worth the purity
afterward.

------
sandworm101
What scares me is how this program has so normalized torture. It's now talked
of too casually in entertainment media (Archer). Waterboarding is even
depicted in network pg-13 programing (Braindead. CBS). And don't get me
started on how many series (recent Star Wars) depict torture not only as
acceptable but effective. Star Wars is a good example as it has run for
decades and we can see the evolving US attitude towards its use and depiction.
I'm a little shocked that Disney hasn't dialed it down, but I guess it's what
the kids want to see.

This is something that damages people. It should not be taken lightly. The
normalization of waterboarding by US SERE schools, where this all started, has
produced countless PTSC cases in soldiers who never even saw a battlefield.
Despite the reality of its use, torture should have no place in any training
regime. You don't shoot a trainees so that they are "better prepared" for
being shot. This is not something that can ever be done harmlessly.

------
louprado
I originally thought that this article would be about the U.S.
agents/tormenters and how it damages _their_ mind. That torture would damage
the mind of the _tortured_ seemed too obvious.

To digress, the idea that an American citizen could be ordered to act in
deplorable manner is in itself deplorable. One would think that the most
powerful, idealistic, and fortunate nation on earth wouldn't have to put its
citizens in this situation and instead would take every opportunity be a
global moral leader.

~~~
iconjack
I thought the same. The claim in the first paragraph that experts "knew"
torture would not cause long-lasting psychological harm is so absurd on the
face of it, I lost interest in the article pretty fast.

------
gaius
And yet, if one were to suggest on here _not_ electing one of the main
architects of this nightmare as POTUS, the cognitive dissonance would kick
right back in...

------
LizardLarry
U.S. Torture is the experience of living in a garbage dietary regime while
exposed to a garbage stimuli regime and being stuffed full of garbage
aesthetic and moral judgments that rationalize that the reason for your
distress is your lack of ability to thrive in garbage.

These people need to stop wasting our godamn time.

------
readyToUff
First off, I'll freely admin I only made it through about one page. I have two
main thoughts on this subject.

1\. I grew up with Catholicism. It isn't my moral system but it is a reference
point. In the catholic moral equation there are two poles: God, and the devil.
God is good, the devil is evil. What does the devil do? Torture. Torture is
the lower bound of the moral equation, it is the worst thing you can do.

2\. "We", I use the term _we_ very loosely here, we support a system which
tortures -- we pay taxes, accept the authority, defend the shores, etc, of an
organization that tortures, and voluntarily associates with torturers.

Given this, I've had a huge change in my political thinking over the last 5-10
years. We are bad guys. Maybe not _the_ bad guys, but we _are_ bad guys. It is
wrong to assume reasonable people will support us. It is wrong to assume that
reasonable people are our friends. It is wrong to assume that if people are
educated, familiarized, empowered, etc. that they will support our continued
existence. This has made me much more politically conservative in a lot of
ways.

~~~
vacri
Don't fall into the trap of polarised good guys vs bad guys. It doesn't
describe humans, and it is the kind of thinking that leads to accepting
torture ("it's okay to do bad things to bad people").

------
Joyfield
Disgusting.

