Although a large portion of the American media—including “liberal” outlets like NPR—continues to abjure the word torture, the release of the Senate’s summary (the report, of course, is classified) seems broadly to have cemented in the public mind that the United States, in the immortal words of one particular winner of the Alfred Nobel Guilty Conscience Dynamite Prize for Achieving a Certain Notoriety in Global Affairs, “tortured some folks.” In fact, it appears that we tortured, raped, and murdered them, but what is the saying? You can’t make an omelet without breaking into a grocery store in the middle of the night and smashing the dairy case with a golf club? It’s something like that, anyway.
This is all pretty straightforward, but America is a post-moral society, and therefore no obvious evil can be condemned without the palliating piping-in of Drs. Efficacy and Outcome. The principle pushers-back are those ineradicable voices pestering our relativist consciences with the crackpot and insistent doubt: what if it worked? And a great deal of the Senate summary addresses precisely this point, dissecting the claims that there is a direct, operative line between shoving a tube into a shackled prisoner’s asshole and pumping saline into his guts while threatening to rape his children to death and whatever money-hungry ex-Navy SEAL claims to have shot Osama bin Laden on a given weekday. Message: it didn’t work.
Well, that’s good to know, but my relief quails at the yawning moral chasm at which our almost-civilization has come screeching to a Wile E. Coyote halt, legs churning air, and the edge, in fact, behind us. Meep meep: what if it did? What if the Senate’s debunking is incomplete? What if, because this is just how the American media and the popular discourse operate, some doubt, some question, some uncertainty remains? Do we then temper our condemnation based on the possibility, however faint, of a desired result?
You can imagine the dark hole that kind of moral accountancy leads into. I mean, by the numbers, the Final Solution was effective. Not a 100% success, obviously, but within the reasonable tolerances for such a large industrial . . . If you can’t, as a society, find it in your metaphorical soul to proclaim—even halfheartedly and just for the cameras—that it is wrong under any circumstances to beat a man near to death, drive him slowly crazy, then chain him to a wall in a dungeon to let him freeze to death, then perhaps it’s time to reevaluate those core values you’ve got tacked to the wall in the break room. If your “Just Hang In There” poster features not just a kitten, but a noose, then perhaps you’re not quite that inspiration after all.
Jacob Bacharach 
I am glad to see your post.And then we criticise theArab countries.I am unsure though what we can do…. we’ve known for 13 years how things were being done to prisoners that were evil… and moreover they had no trial or lawyer.Welll done for writing this
Why are you dredging up the past? People were scared back then! You’re making us look bad! The Muslims will blow up another embassy! It wasn’t real torture! ISIS is still worse than us! It was all Bush’s fault! I voted for the other guy! You’re playing politics! The interrogators thought it was all legal! They’re gonna kill that poor woman!
why does the “public mind” assume the purpose of all of this was to get intelligence?
my bet is that it IS effective. but that the purpose for which it is effective is even more horrific than extracting false information.
aint humanity neat?
hose core values you’ve got tacked to the wall in the break room.
OSHA regs?
Yeah, right. Workplace accidents are just so funny. Grow up.
today on the radio i heard “Senate report says CIA guys lie” and “CIA guys say Senate report lies” – how do you know who to believe?
Putin made them do it !!1!!!!11!!
Hey. We’re good people. We add #Blacklivesmatter to everything we tweet. We’re *outraged* that the cops engaged in evil acts and then looked the other way holding no one accountable. At least we have a good president now.
A “post moral society” where anything can be justified. And sold. And happily bought while we rush on to something meaningless.
Reblogged this on Speeding To The Stop Sign.
I find it hard to see any morality entering the equation if you notice the technocratic nature of the details.
For example, they put nuts in the rectal pudding they pumped into the poor souls. Was this for a ribbed-condom effect, or did they have a dietician on staff to ensure the proper nutrition?
Brother Ali – Uncle Sam Goddamn
I hope you don’t mind jacob, but I’d like to send much love out to “al schumann” (smbva …stop me before I vote again ….) …at the inception of the end of hibernation ….. in the northern hemisphere where I last understood that he dwelled in. al schumann, provided with me with a so much needed connection …..I love you “al” …always will.
dance …. danse …. etcetera …
and, well yeah, it is odd how it snows and freezes (freez iz ) more, …. at that point where the sunshine starts lasting longer. Cannot even imagine how many youngins have asked that question … only to be abused by Science Experts™.
I’ll never, ever, forget being abused by a Science Teacher™, in my pre teen years, who proclaimed it was not possible that I could see the moon in the sky during the daylight hours (during ‘new moon’).
i.e.: Ya’ll lame ass ExSpurts .. it is okay …and likely will garner ya far more respect (and love …… ;0) ….) …if ya just admit that you do not know …