Torture Theory

If I had to bet on what the title of Jeremy's first post would be....

Welcome.

Here's my effort at addressing the government's dabbling in one of his auxiliary subjects. What fascinates me about the administration is that every abhorrent policy comes packaged with a justification that looks like the work of philosophers who are also the greatest cynics in the world. I can't get past the sense that there is an anti-philosophy at its heart:

Sadly, the reality is that internal administration memoranda, most notably the infamous Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, provided the entire executive branch with a definition of torture constrained beyond any comprehensible usage in natural language. For a physical act to amount to torture, claimed the OLC, it had to produce pain "equivalent in intensity to [that] accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Heinous practices like the removal of fingernails or genital electrocution could fail to be considered torture if they did not entail permanent physical disability. And there was a further catch: For torture to have taken place, the "severe pain and suffering" in alleged instances of torture "must be inflicted with specific intent … expressly intend[ed] to achieve the forbidden act." And in case any doubt arises over whether such intent was present in a particular case, an alleged torturer's sincere affirmation that he did not act with specific intent is enough to settle the matter.

The government was forced to invalidate these findings due to public outcry almost as soon as the relevant documents were uncovered in 2004. As far as we know, at the time of al Jamadi's death in 2003, the so-called "torture memo" was still the executive branch's operative interpretation of the sections of U.S. Code and international treaties concerning torture. In other words, as long as al Jamadi's interrogators could claim not to have specifically intended to crucify him to death, they would not, according to our government, have been guilty of torture. Given their cynical restrictions on what the term "torture" can apply to, the administration's claims that the OLC memo was never used to enable torture or immunize interrogators against prosecution for it are hardly reassuring.

Another set of memoranda is now in place delineating what intelligence officials are permitted to do in interrogations. The administration refuses to release them. As citizens of a republic, we have a right to know whether acts of such extreme malice and evil as Palestinian hangings continue to be committed in our name, and whether they bear the approbation of the highest levels of our government. Overcoming the administration's obvious contempt for any notion of public accountability will require defending the ordinary uses of words. We must insist that our media do not act as an echo chamber for official neologisms, do not use "coercive interrogation" to refer to torture and do not use "stress position" to refer to an ersatz crucifixion. The stakes could not be higher: If we allow the government to wage an internal war against natural language, our nation's external war of moral principles is already lost.

What time is it anyway? Why am I up this early?