Did You Read the NYT Article on the Tortures Recently Revealed Happening in Guantanamo Bay?

It’s terrifying. Nothing justifies treatment like this.

Granted, this guy was a terrorist who had been involved in the periphery of the attacks on 9/11. However, when captured, he claims that he immediately and completely cooperated with the US government, and that the torture techniques applied to him just increased.

I won’t get into the specifics of the techniques here. Suffice it to say, his tormentors were radically creative and morally deprived. We have principles here in America that protect people from cruel and unusual punishment. Is there any depravity that makes a person deserve to be tortured? I say no.

My reason may surprise you. I think the problem lies with what it does to the psyche and souls of the people who do the torturing, as much as it does with the liberties of those tortured. We are creating monsters when we ask someone to strip away the humanity of someone else. Both parties are made destitute.

Even if you could find someone who “deserved” to be tortured — say, Hitler or Pol Pot — you could not justify destroying the person’s humanity who had to do the deed.

Torture has become a common trope on TV. I caught an example of waterboarding on a run-of-the-mill, lame cop show the other night. Nothing was made of the segment, and it didn’t serve as a lesson for something bigger. Just a bit of action to move along the storyline.

One of the greatest minds of last century wrote: “Be careful who you pretend to be. Because in the end, you are who you pretend to be.” This is from Kurt Vonnegut, who knew a thing or two about the inhumanities found in war, having survived the bombing of Dresden, a non-military target, by his own people. I would argue that the more commonly we accept torture, the more calmly we consider it, the more distorted we become as human beings.

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