Historical Use of Torture
The Intelligence Science Board advised the U.S. Department of Defense on technical and scientific matters in 2006 to use torture during interrogation during since it is shown to produce reliable information. When a subject is being interrogated under extremely harsh conditions their fight or flight instinct is triggers. This innate reaction leads to victims producing often-false information for the purpose of appeasing the interrogator. It also affects the convict’s mental state and can therefore alter his or her memories and recollection of events and information.
The Spanish conquistador use torture to get confessions from accused heretics. Initially suspects were deprived of food, forced to drink immense quantities of water or burned with hot coal, but these techniques were soon deemed too tame. In order to hasten up the process, more brutal approaches came into practice. Many were victim to a method named strappado. Subject’s hands were tied behind their back and raised until they were being hung. To increase the pain officers would place weight on the victim’s ankle or jerk them vigorously. This often resulted in their shoulders being pulled out of its socket and permanent injury. Even more barbarous was the rack. The martyr’s hands and feet were fastened down to a wooden frame that had rollers at each end. The torturer cranked the rollers so that the person’s cartilage, ligaments and bones snapped.
The only way for one to end the pain was to admit to committing heresy. The goal of the conquistadors was to extract a confession since they wanted to enlighten the accused. If someone refused to confess they were subject to life in prison, whereas someone who conceded received forgiveness from the church. Regardless of if someone were guilty of heresy they would often confess, so that they could protect their life and well-being.
Witch-Hunt
An infamous case of torturous interrogation occurred in the 17th century witch-hunt. Desperation to protect ones self from the devil possessed people to torture, burn and kill those accused of practicing evil sorcery. Friedrich was a priest that sought to end this atrocious practice and he used the word of god to defend his claim. Although he believed that there were witches, he thought that the guilty must be allowed freedom, so that the innocent are not condemned either. He is following the example of Jesus of Nazareth for in Matthew 13:24-30
24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.
25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.
26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.
30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.
The witched parallel the weeds and the innocent civilians are the grains. Jesus indirectly preaches to allow the witched to live in order to keep civilians alive. The witches cannot be the sole ones to be punished, since even the innocents confess to crimes when under the right conditions.
The immense stress torture subjects its victim to, leads to the release of specific neurotransmitters that limit cognition in the hippocampus, which is where long-term memories accumulate. The glucocorticoid hypothesis of stress in particular is concerned with the nature of the hippocampus since it is densely concentrated with corticosteroid receptors and is consequently sensitive to changes in the level of cortisone, or the stress hormone. In a study with rodents, the hippocampal neurons died and neuronal dendrites atrophy when they were exposed to glucocorticoids, a class of corticosteroids. Large amount of cortisone greatly throws off the equilibrium and prevents the brain from functioning appropriately.
Torture of the USA
Even the United States, which prides itself on being righteous and a defendant of the inherent dignity of each person, is guilty of using torture during interrogation in recent years. 9/11 struck legitimate fear within the heart of many Americans and desperation for justice within the government. Bush took executive actions that authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” during the War on Terror. On December 10th 1984 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment- an international human rights treaty that strived to prevent torture and other acts of inhumane and degrading punishment globally. Due to this agreement he was unable to explicitly condone torture so he bypassed the law by strategically posing the situation as a mere enhancement of questioning techniques. While taking advantage of this loophole United States official committed various heinous crimes against humanity.
A prisoner by the name Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 attacks and was therefore water boarded 183. A British man who practiced Islam was put into solitary confinement in a shipping container for 18 to 20 months and he was so desperate for human interaction that he would bang his head against the wall. In a secret prison near Kabul, Afghanistan a convict named Rahman died from hypothermia after being left naked from the waist down and shackled to the cold concrete floor for ten days.
Many argue that national security is more important than the innocent civilians that could potentially be harmed. But in actuality, even after the extreme obstruction of human rights, few benefits were reaped. Thirty-nine detainees who were subjected to especially aggressive interrogation yielded no intelligence, while others provided useful information without ever being subjected to the harsh techniques. The Senate reviewed 20 of the most commonly cited examples of successes attributed by the CIA to enhanced interrogation and found that each of those examples were false. Time was also spent torturing the innocent for it was found that of the 119 detainees at least 26 were wrongly held.
Officials should not be enforcing the law while simultaneously undermining it. When those that are meant to protect human rights violate human rights the governing system becomes unsteady. If officials break the law in pursuit of it, a message of capricious and abusive power is sent to the public. This destruction of public trust is lethal.
These “enhanced interrogation techniques” conclusively took a large humanitarian toll but it also greatly effected the United States financial situation. The cost of hiring only two psychologists to administer these techniques is 80 million dollars. Beyond this the government paid for facilities, officers and security to carry out the interrogation. The Bush administration has received scrutiny from scientist such as Shane O’Mara. He is a neurobiologist at the Trinity College in Dublin, coined the tactics that the Bush administration employed as “folk psychology,” and “ unlikely to do anything other than the opposite of that intended by coercive or ‘enhance’ interrogation.” A general blanket of secrecy and information suppression now covers a vast and growing array of government documents. The Bush administration classified 15.6 million documents in fiscal year 2004, which is 81% more than were classified in the year before September 11, 2001. Also, the administration invoked ‘state secrets’ privileges, which allow the President to withhold documents from the courts, Congress, and the public, twenty-three times between September 2001 and May 2006. ‘State secrets’ privileges were used only four times between 1953 and 1976 even though that was the height of the Cold War.’ In an attempt to preserve the peace on home soil, while torture during interrogation occurs, the government is instinctively urged to keep secrets.
The detrimental effects of illegitimate approaches and political secrecy are indisputable when looking at the administrations approval rating. Immediately preceding the 9/11 attack President Bush rating was 85%, but after news of Guantanamo Bay and other cases over torture came to light this number steeply dropped to 46%. The distain left within American citizens led to a decrease in American why pride and trust in the government.
This loss of faith also knows no borders. President Barack Obama openly condemned the events and noted the difficulties they would generate when saying, “These techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.” In May 2006, the U.N. Committee against Torture chastised the United States for violating the human rights of those held captive in the war on terror. The CAT committee rejected U.S claims that the Convention against Torture did not apply to U.S. personnel acting outside of the United States or during wartime. CAT called on the United States to close all secret detention centers; hold accountable senior military and civilian officials who authorized, acquiesced or consented to acts of torture committed by their subordinates; and end its practice of transferring detainees to countries with no ‘diplomatic assurance’ that detainees will not be subject to torture. Although President Bush blatantly stated, “I have the authority to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan . . . [and] I reserve the right to exercise this authority in this or future conflicts’ intergovernmental organizations disagreed. In fact the false perception by the American government led to the United State’s image being distorted.
The torture of people accused of committing a crime is not only profoundly immoral, but it is also counterproductive. The maltreatment of detainees, who are unable to defend themselves, creates great rage among their larger communities. This torture adds fuel to the fire and feeds factions’ desire for vengeance and in return creates more hatred and violence. The inhumane treatment of detainees blatantly put American hypocrisy on display forced politician to focus their efforts on convincing the world that this episode was an aberration borne of extreme circumstances that is now in the past.
Arguably Genghis Khan’s motivation to build his barbarous empire that has the largest continuous landmass in history can be traced back to the torture he endured while an innocent child. During a trip a rivalry tribe, the Tatar, poisoned his father, Yesugei. Upon his death his own tribe ostracized his remaining family to near-refugee status. Without a tribe to protect him he was vulnerable to exploitation. During his youth he had been enslaved and threatened with death multiple time, but each time he was able to use his wit to escape. Once Genghis Khan had united with his brothers and gained the support of various clansmen he began his rise to power. He set out to avenge his father’s murder by decimating the Tatar army, and ordered the killing of every Tatar male who was more than 3 feet tall. He also got his revenge on the Taichi’ut, a clan that had once enslaved him, by using a series of massive cavalry attacks, including having all of the Taichi’ut chiefs boiled alive. The motivation for the merciless acts committed by Genghis Khan comes from the abuse and torture him and his family had endured.
Why Torture Must Be Avoided
If torture were to only be used when pertinent information needs to be extracted the issue that arises is – where the line should be drawn between a situation that requires torture and one in which it is inhumane. If stress positions and sleep deprivation do not work, should one progress to water boarding and branding? Can interrogators be trusted to heed such distinctions? Decisions that regard when to use torture and how much to use lead to slippery slopes that should be completely be avoided.
