Millman: Why did we torture? [View all]

[Recursion]

(Don't freak out about the URL; Millman is a fascinating thinker.)

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/why-did-we-torture/

Most commonly, torture’s purpose is not to extract intelligence, but to extract confessions. Whether you’re talking about the Inquisition or the NKVD, there is value to a given regime in “proving” that the accused is guilty. It vindicates the justice of the regime’s actions generally; it demonstrates the power of the regime over truth itself. It may well be of distinctly secondary importance whether or not the confession is actually true, whether the accused is actually guilty. So long as he confesses, the regime’s power is confirmed.

Relatedly, torture is a valuable tool to instill fear in the general population. Incarceration is fearful, but if incarceration brings with it terrible physical and psychological pain, including the possibility of permanent injury or death, then the possibility of being apprehended by the authorities is much more fearful, and ordinary civilians will be much more cautious about risking that possibility. If instilling fear is more important to a regime than inspiring confidence, cooperation and loyalty, then torture serves these purposes well.

...

I’ve written before about the overwhelming fear that afflicted the country in the wake of 9-11, and how, perversely, exaggerating the severity of the threat from al Qaeda helped address that fear, because it made it acceptable to contemplate more extreme actions in response. If al Qaeda was really just a band of lunatics who got lucky, then 3,000 died because, well, because that’s the kind of thing that can happen. If al Qaeda was the leading edge of a worldwide Islamo-fascist movement with the real potential to destroy the West, then we would be justified in nuking Mecca in response. Next to that kind of response, torture seems moderate.

Willingness to torture became, first within elite government and opinion-making circles, then in the culture generally, and finally as a partisan GOP talking point, a litmus test of seriousness with respect to the fight against terrorism. That – proving one’s seriousness in the fight – was its primary purpose from the beginning, in my view. It was only secondarily about extracting intelligence. It certainly wasn’t about instilling fear or extracting false confessions – these would not have served American purposes. It was never about “them” at all. It was about us. It was our psychological security blanket, our best evidence that we were “all-in” in this war, the thing that proved to us that we were fierce enough to win.

My snipping may seem to make the wrong point, incidentally. The first two paragraphs (which I included just because I think they're very good) are Millman's argument about what torture usually is used for: as a proof of control over truth itself ("There... are... four... lights!&quot . But he argues that Our Torture is Different (tm) because it was largely used as an internal signal of "strength" or will" or whatever.