Bumper Sticker Liberalism by Mark Goldblatt

Author:Mark Goldblatt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

“Impeach Bush. Torture Cheney.”

As far as I can recall, I’ve been tortured at least three times: There was a high school gym teacher who made my entire class stand with our arms outstretched for a half hour because one boy had giggled while he was talking. There was a camp counselor who kept dunking my head underwater after I sassed him during free swim at the bungalow colony pool. And there was a burly cop who shoved me up against a brick wall and waited for a crime victim to ID me. (The victim came by a minute later and shook her head; no, I wasn’t the guy who robbed her.) There may have been other occasions, but I can’t remember the specifics.

According to the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory, torture is defined as

any act by which severe pain and suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a male or female person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

The gym teacher, the camp counselor and the burly cop were all persons “acting in an official capacity.” All caused me “pain and suffering, whether physical or mental.” The pain and suffering certainly seemed “severe” to me at the time. It seems less severe now, looking back; then again, pain and suffering always seem more severe when you’re undergoing it, less severe looking back.

What I’m getting at here, if you haven’t figured it out by now, is that the 1984 UN Convention’s definition of “torture” might have been a wee bit too broad. Think about it. By UN standards, the very act of informing a detainee that he’s being detained could be construed as torture since it’s likely to cause him considerable mental anguish, and that mental anguish, once the gravity of the situation sets in, might well become severe.

If you stick with the 1984 UN definition, there’s no question that the United States has engaged in torture in its war against totalitarian Islam. The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented cases in which, for example, CIA interrogators twirled detainees with towels around their necks and slammed them into walls—even though, it should be noted, the towels were used to prevent whiplash and the walls were specially designed to give on impact. Detainees were also stripped naked and doused with cold water, forced to stand in stress positions, confined in coffinlike boxes, deprived of solid food for days at a time, belly-slapped and, most controversially, waterboarded.4

The treatment of Muslim detainees, then, was decidedly more severe than any of the instances of torture I’ve experienced.

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