The Torture Thing

When President Obama won his first Presidential election, much of the world was jubilant.

With this country's ignominious history of race relations, the election of Obama seemed miraculous, and two centuries of racial hatred seemed to melt away in a single election. For a while, the U.S. was circled by an aura of hope for a world starving for justice.

It was nice while it lasted.

The release last week of the Senate Committee on Intelligence's "Report on Torture" demonstrates how quickly the worm can turn. The Report's release jolted into memory the recent American cruelty that violated every standard of human decency, whether in wartime or peace.

The Senate report is the first authoritative investigation that validates what most of us suspected in the first place: Torture doesn't work on the madmen of terror.

And it contained new revelations that made the torment worse.

We learned from the report there was more torture than earlier revealed; that our tactics were more barbaric—even sadistic; living conditions more squalid and victims more numerous than previously reported. And the report confirmed that at least 26 people who were tortured were proven innocent.

Imperfect America, above all other global powers before us, has come to represent the Western ethic of basic human rights. We helped write the book on human rights. In America's narrative, the West has a better way: torture is always wrong.

Not all people agree, of course. Some apologists deny that what the CIA did is torture. Others admit it was torture but defend it as an acceptable response to our enemies in a dangerous world. Many others foment a kind of bloodlust for revenge that is counterproductive hyperventilating. Apparently, these people strive to be just like the foreign torturers.

Defenders of torture weaken our ability to elicit more benign actions and behaviors from other nations. While other national heads-of-state might understand the whys and wherefores of the U.S. response to the 911 attacks, the average citizens of strategically crucial nations see our government as being just like the corrupt governments they suffer under. Setting a good example is instructive.

So is setting a bad one.

Is it too much of a reach to find the bloody threads of the ISIS beheadings and other atrocities stitched into the emotional wounds inflicted through America's own torture?