Truth is like love. It only exists when you believe in it, and trying to force it out of someone else is just a bad idea. Yet we accept the idea that we can force the truth out of people when we really need it, when the lives of others depend on the acquisition of information that veraciously corresponds to actual movements of money, people, material and ideas that constitute a terrorist threat to the United States and our allies.
In fewer words, we have ways of making you talk.
About two weeks ago, rights activists and Bush administration officials were again critiquing each other, using the rhetoric and nuance of what does and does not constitute “torture” when referring to the United States’ methods of getting people to answer questions “truthfully.”
Many individuals and groups here in the U.S. identify themselves as accepting neither torture nor the administration’s double-speak about torture definitions and practices. However, in having to admit the failure of all recent attempts to truly remove torture from our truth and security-making mechanisms, we all have to accept torture. At least momentarily, while regrouping for a renewed reasoned approach, opponents of the practice of torture have to accept that it is still factually integral and present in the way this country extracts truth from and makes security in the world. But maybe – and stay with me on this one – just maybe we should stop resisting, or “not accepting” torture on the level of its manifestation, and take this current pause to look at the constructive process that serves as the source of torture.
The issue of torture is really split into two parts: one that politicians and activists want to discuss, and one that they don’t. The first part holds the matters of what constitutes torture, if those measures are needed or even effective. The second part is a critique of the social role that torture plays, and the correlation between the theory of the construction of this social role and the ramifications of its actual practice.
Generically speaking, any social construction can be seen to come from a social desire, which creates a demand, which is then filled by social resources. For example, say we want to fight disease. This desire creates the demand for disease-fighting solutions, which is filled through social discourse, methods and practitioners that give us modern medicine. Likewise, a social desire for fighting fires results in the social role prescribed for firefighters, and so forth.
Then say we want to protect our idea of peace, liberty and freedom. What do we get? Well, in addition to developing an understanding of what these concepts may mean, we get a state structure to arrange peace, and we get soldiers to protect it. While the methods of this state can vary greatly, we end up with a situation in which the ideas that we had hoped to protect with a state are now completely contingent on the continued existence of that state.
In other words, the state’s own existence becomes more important than the ideals it was constructed to protect. Once this is achieved, the methods of state existence and influence are self-justified because the social ideals rely upon the social structure, not so much the other way around. This sounds reminiscent of a Hobbesian desire to end fear through absolute truth and governance, and for good reason. The state’s last resort for dealing with opposition is not reason, but coercion based on violence, and in turn based on fear. Fear to end all fear.
At this point, we are left to look at the methods of state influence that are commonly accepted to sustain our society’s ideological ends. It takes almost no thought to encounter the ethically perplexing concept of war. In this paradox of killing to save lives, murder on massive scales is repeatedly justified through the relationship of happiness and state influence. But we accept this activity of mutually premeditated murder as a condition of humanity and of our nation’s existence. We also, though less openly, accept the idea of killing civilians as part of a military campaign – it was done repeatedly throughout the early 1940s. However, we are forced to pause when we consider the systematic infliction of pain and suffering on an unarmed individual in the name of extracting the truth in order to protect the homeland’s ideals. We pause, but do we not accept?
Even if it makes us uncomfortable because of the ethical ramifications, the use of interrogations in order to gain information has long been a part of the United State’s methods of winning wars and protecting the homeland. We accept the methods because we value the protection of our comfort. In fact, torture’s sociological role is inextricable from the United States’ methods of control because torture is a fundamental element of state influence, and we base our happiness and security on the success and longevity of that influence.
I don’t know if anyone can ultimately know when an interview moves from interrogation to torture, but the definition will likely continue to evade us, while the practice will not. The truth is that torture may not result in truth, but it satisfies a social emotional appeal, both towards protecting ideals, and serving an idea of justice – or at least self-justification.
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