Examining Paradigms

There has been a steady amount of media coverage about government condoned torture during the interrogation of terrorist suspects. A large portion of the public is in an uproar about it and I have a few thoughts. However, I find that most people are missing the larger question. The question shouldn’t be whether or not ______ interrogation method is torture or not. The question should be, “if these methods are appropriate, why are we not performing them during criminal investigations of our own citizens?”

First lets gain some perspective. I will not argue that the publicized technique of terrorist suspects are distasteful. I would not like to be kept up for days, nor would I enjoy being water boarded, or threatened with death, especially if I was being falsely accused. However, lets remember that these people were not having their hand put into a meat grinder or having molten lead poured up their asses.

Now lets discuss the issue. The government claims that these techniques were successful in getting important information to prevent terrorist attacks. I am not wholly convinced that is the case, but lets say that it is. The government claims it walked a tightrope in the sense that they walked right up to the line between persuasive interrogation and torture, but that it did not cross that line. Again, I am not sure where that line is and I am not sure that the government did not cross it, but for the moment, lets assume that they never crossed it.

Now: If these techniques are effective and they are not “torture”, then why are they not used in the American criminal justice system? Why are police not allowed to rough up a suspect, keep him up for days or hook him up to cables? If your child was being held by a predator, would you not want the police to deliver a few painful blows to the head and ribs to get information? Would you care if the suspect was water boarded to extract information on the whereabouts of your child? I assume that many parents would not care. However, for some reason we have legislated against such methods and we have done so to protect the falsely accused and to respect what we have labeled as Human Rights. Not rights that we think only Americans should have, but rights that we think HUMANS should have. This is what burns my hide. It is the double standard.

I propose that if the government really thinks that these methods are acceptable, then we should allow them to be implemented within our own criminal justice program. If for “some” reason the government/public is not willing to do that, then we need to shut up, stop making excuses and cease using these methods on ANYONE. We can not maintain a facade about this. Either we decide it is wrong or we decide that it is right and we implement these methods on our own people.