“The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” – Carl Jung

It is a travesty that even democracies have dungeons. Conceptually the two should not co-exist. A democracy is a system of government whose primary normative goal is the preservation of human rights not indulging in violating them systematically. But recently two democracies the world’s largest (India) and the world’s oldest (US) both have been implicated in institutionalized use of torture.

The declassification of the now famous “torture Memos” that show how the Bush administration tried to legalize torture as enhanced interrogation techniques, has generated an intense political debate about the moral responsibility and limits of a democracy in the US. Even though the release of the memos has exposed some Americans to international and possibly domestic prosecution for war crimes; it has also underscored the serious commitment that American democracy makes to human rights.

It is however very disappointing that some still insist that we should use torture while others argue that waterboarding is not really torture. They should try it or at least watch Christopher Hutchins brief attempt to experience it.

I once hit my head against a boat while swimming in the sea off Mumbai’s coast and momentarily passed out. I nearly drowned and then came to my senses. Imagine waking up while drowning. I cannot describe the intense mix of dread and terror I felt. I can still recall vividly, 20 years after that event, the horror that I experienced that day. Believe me, I will say anything not to relive that experience. It was terrifying.

According to most experts of torture, barring a few like Dick Cheney, torture is ineffective. If we have to waterboard people hundreds of times, then either torture doesn’t work at all, or we have some really very sadistic and mean people working in our government. Torture is evil not a forensic technique.

While the memos showcase the dark side of America, they also highlight the bright side. The debate shows that there are many Americans who will not compromise their values even when faced with the fear of terrorism.

Muslims have known for decades that Muslim countries in the Middle East torture political prisoners. We have also learned that it was to Muslim countries that the US was out-sourcing the torture that it could not handle in-house. But there is no hue and cry from Muslims about this as there was when the Abu Ghraib and Gitmo stories came out. Unfortunately torture by Middle Eastern governments is normal.

Muslims have learnt to live with it. It is a shame that there is so little campaigning from Muslims on the issue of torture, even though those who are being tortured everywhere are primarily Muslims.

Torture has become a global epidemic and takes many ugly forms. The recent circulation of a video out of Pakistan, showing two men holding a young women down on the ground while another man hit her on her behind with a stick with a big crowd watching was surreal. This was torture as a spectator sport! And that too in the name of God! The episode has shaken Pakistani civil society and sparked many protests. People marched in the streets demanded that the barbarians responsible for the shameful act were brought to justice.

Last Saturday, on May 2nd, 2009, I keynoted an event hosted by the Indian Muslim Council in Chicago, which sought to increase awareness in the United States about the Indian governments use of extrajudicial tactics – detention without legal arrests, torture and systematic harassment of minorities in India. These tactics in India are indicative of the institutionalization of prejudice in law enforcement agencies.

A recent Indian governmental investigation by a special attorney – the Ravi Chander Report – exposed how the Indian police had randomly arrested several youth in India and tortured them trying to force them to confess to terrorism. The release of that report is creating awareness about the widespread use of torture in India.

I am happy that I got an opportunity to make a small but meaningful contribution to raise awareness and encourage condemnation of torture. I invite all you good folks out there to do one small thing, wherever you are, in whatever way you can, against torture.

I recommend people to read "Torture and the Twilight of Empire" by Marnia Lazreg. http://bit.ly/RPPyp

Americans aren't uncivilised religious nuts like the Taliban. Torture for Americans is a normal action of a civilised government. Ask Americans who post here. Torture is the only thing those Taliban terrorists will listen to. America ... please torture Muslims, especially those who have access to Madrassahs (and nothing else). Its the only language we understand.

@ghulam: there are many Americans who oppose it, especially those of us whose profession was a military one. We know its ineffective, immoral and the last refuge of the Frustrated. At least in America, upon a peaceful transition of power, we can reverse the idiocy of the outgoing administration. In too many Muslim states, the idiocy is a decades-long continuous affair. And, given that so much torture continues on a vast scale in Muslim-majority states, perhaps it is those people who know themselves the best and declare that "Its the only language we understand."

>We know its ineffective, immoral and the last refuge of the Frustrated.<

Really? Then why were you cheerleading the war against Iraq?

>At least in America, upon a peaceful transition of power, we can reverse the idiocy of the outgoing administration. <

LOL, thanks for the laugh Gumby. Yes, peaceful transition from one inarticulate puppet to a well spoken puppet, continuing the same old madness.

>In too many Muslim states, the idiocy is a decades-long continuous affair. <

Lie#24653. You're the ones installing and backing every puppet regime/dictatorship in the Muslim world(and non-Muslim world for that matters). The idiocy, self-deception and hypocrisy is yours for everyone to see.

Flogging is torture.

One of my high school classmates worked as an ethicist for the Clinton Administration. One of the theoretical questions they addressed concerned torture: if a terrorist had hidden a nuclear weapon that would blow up in one hour and the only way to get that information out of him was torture, should he be tortured or not?

Their conclusion was that torturing the terrorist was wrong but should be done anyway.

@Solomon: that's called the "Ticking Bomb Dilemma"; its false because its never happened. Also, according game theory, the terrorist has nothing to gain by revealing where it is. All he/she has to do it hold out for the short period until detonation to achieve their goal. Even better, they can lie to make the pain stop and let their torturers run around in circles until it detonates. The scenario falters because it assumes information gleaned from torture is accurate. Time and time again its been proven that it almost never is.

Anyway, they might also believe that the more pain they endure, the greater their reward in the soon-to-come afterlife. A true believer like our AQ buddies fit that mold very well.

This month, I wrote a column outlining two exceptions to the no-torture rule: the ticking time bomb scenario and its less extreme variant...the column elicited protest and opposition that were, shall we say, spirited....moral calculus is important. Even John McCain says that in ticking time bomb scenarios you "do what you have to do."

The Torture Debate, Continued

I don't give a rats arse what John McCain says; he's a looser. Tell me A:) when such a scenario has actually occured and B:) whether torture got accurate information that no-kidding led directly to prevention.

Oh, and tell me if you are willing to inflict harm on a restrained individual and how far you're willing to go along with how you would deal with its effects on you. No more armchair torturor punditry, please.

A) I have no idea.
B) I have no idea.

"tell me if you are willing to inflict harm on a restrained individual"

I doubt I have the skills to actually do the job myself. However, I feel I endorse torture in specific cases, because when I heard that torture had been employed against the highest captured officers of Al Qaeda (Khalid and Zubadayah) my first thought was approximately: "Damn, I wish they had told us earlier, then we wouldn't feel so worried that AlQ would nuke us." (I had always rejected the idea of torture until that wake-up moment.)

Only if those feelings were dominant could I stomach that, otherwise I couldn't face myself in the morning.

Torture is a tool. So are prison, solitary confinement, good-guy-bad-guy interrogation, and fingerprints. Whether they serve as tools of oppression rather than just investigation depends upon their application. That is a matter of judgment, so there must be specific people to be held accountable - legally and perhaps publicly - for deciding and executing their use.

What really bothers me is B. Why was I so ready emotionally to accept the idea of Americans torturing prisoners without even knowing if they could be effective?

>Flogging is torture.<

No it is not. And your reason for bringing this up? Just a distractor to justify water boarding. You seem to have quite the obsession with flogging don't you? You're probably a kiddie fiddler or an animal abuser to fear it so. All the rage in Europe these days.
Last I checked flogging doesn't make one swallow their own tongue or suffer brain damage. At least you don't have to worry about the brain damage. Tends to be the default mental health of inbred nazi pigs.

OmarG >>> we can reverse the idiocy of the outgoing administration.

With all due respect to your faith in American politics, these aren't new American techniques. In fact they're very old and well established... "American techniques". The only problem is that they are being used within the context of some American judicial system. Americans have proven to have no problem using it extra-judicially.

Eliza >>> Flogging is torture.

A convenient enough definition ~ when collateral damage means zero human beings have died, and the death penalty has so many variants and sometimes is applied to children. What was that percentage ... 1% of the US population is in prison?

Solomon >>> The Torture Debate, Continued

The irony about your whole argument is that Muslims have no grey lines when it comes to torture and abuse of prisoners. That debate ended a long time ago when the Prophet of Islam instructed his followers to feed and tend to prisoners of war (often people who had used torture on them!). What bugs me is how little you appreciate the "terrorists" capacity to have such an ethical debate, but assume that we'd believe that you and even people in the white house effectively are.

Solomon >>> That is a matter of judgment, so there must be specific people to be held accountable - legally and perhaps publicly - for deciding and executing their use.

Oh. An attack of conscience 6 years after the invasions. Forgive me if I find it hard to believe when all you're doing is arguing in favour. How transparent.

All you're doing is redefining a moral argument. It is and persists to be your ends justifying the means. That's why you constantly rehash arguments about Iraq and Palestine .. and ignore the twisted hypocritical and inconsistent paths, your arguments have followed.

Torture is not meant to extract information. It is meant to humiliate your victim, and artificially creates a legal basis for more war and murder. Not unlike Israel blockading Gaza to antagonise a response to justify the war ..planned a year in advance anyways. Information extracted using torture has been used in the same way as terrorism incited through entrapment is used. To quell anti-war sentiment and provoke public sentiment and further the political goals.

Torture is a political tool and not a legal tool and your argument only serves to prove it. You blur the line ethically between law/order and war/politics like a pro .. no different to a fascist. It seems you've defined your "ethics" by the side you represent. And all those stupid posts encouraging Muslims to understand the failures in our thinking and development seem even more inconsequential and far less sincere.

DrM >>> Last I checked flogging doesn't make one swallow their own tongue or suffer brain damage.

Dude, you're not going to get anything there. Last word from Eliza is that evil is allowed for Americans. I believe she thinks they're much more civilised at it.

"Torture is not meant to extract information. It is meant to humiliate your victim." That's right. Flogging is torture.

All of this sadistic degradation degrades the perps as well as the vics.

If I could I would pull the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan this weekend. i suppose we will blunder around for some months more.

>Dude, you're not going to get anything there. Last word from Eliza is that evil is allowed for Americans. I believe she thinks they're much more civilised at it.<

Not only Americans, just White people, Ghulam. You'll notice she'll litter each one of her inane posts with multiple idiotic references to flogging as if that's the worst thing you can do to anybody. Ofcourse its just a hypocritical ploy to distract and move the topic away from water boarding, which she fully approves off. The key difference is that CRIMINALS are flogged as opposed to having kidnapped men being water boarded to extract bogus information to keep phony wars going. You have to remember that elizard belongs to the same "culture" which thinks its normal behavior to knock up pets, have political parties for pedophiles and engage in S&M(which generally involves whips).
The last time flogging was big news was back in the mid 1990s when Michael P. Fay, an American was ordered to be flogged for criminal activity by the government of Singapore. There was the usual self appointed "human rights" brigade make some noise, but to no avail. Fay got his ass flogged and was kicked out of Singapore. Good bloody riddance. He decided to beat up his own father after having a few too many beers back in Ohio. Now that's how your treat daddy dearest for trying to get you spared from being flogged.
But I digress, Eliza should be flogged and water boarded for the simple fact that she's a racist idiot in need of a reality check. Throw in the electric chair for a 3 in 1 deal.

You'll notice she'll litter each one of her inane posts with multiple idiotic references to flogging as if that's the worst thing you can do to anybody. >>>

You must remember that the word "flogging" specifically inreference to ritualized whipping is highly fetishized in the west. Brought first into prominence and the public eye by the Marquis de Sade in the 18th century, it's a word the west has come to know and love, salaciously one might add. And many salivate to the term, willingly or not, just by the air of "guilt-free" sexual abandon that it seems, for some, to offer. I believe this is why flogging has caught the western attention moreso than just about any other cultural trait of the Eastern portions of the world. The word is pushing far more buttons than a lot of westerners even realize. And I guarantee you that given the opportunity to watch a good old fashioned scolding, or a FLOGGING on You Tube ....many Americans would choose the latter, and save it for future viewing. I also suggest that the methods of pubishment in the Middle East have assumed the fetishistic and voyeuristic place in Western fantasies that the harem once held. My proof is that far more people are indignant and vocal in their condemnation in their obvious preoccupation with "flogging" than they are about the starving infants in Africa, the murdered and dispossessed in any number of places, and any other evil in the world that doesn't give them a secret erotic tingle that they can't even probaly admit to themselves. A fun exercise on these boards is to note the number of times certain words creep into people's posts. It can be a real eye-opener. End of Cultural Analysis.

Slaves in the US used to be flogged...perhaps that's why. I suppose ya'll never watched "Roots", but then again why would Muslims care about Blackamericans or even factor them into any social analysis of American culture??

And, ya'll around here seem too easily to assume a sexual component to Americans' behavior and opinions. I say that's the Muslims' fetishization of Americans: "the land of sexual plenty where all the women give it up and all the men are stallions". Get over it and get more in tune with American history and you'll find more rational and less "salacious" explanations of behavior.

And, ya'll around here seem too easily to assume a sexual component to Americans' behavior and opinions. I say that's the Muslims' fetishization of Americans: "the land of sexual plenty where all the women give it up and all the men are stallions". >>>>

Dude ... I am a white blue-eyed farangi, born, bred and raised in the US. I lived in san Francisco for 25 years and in NYC for 20. I read the newspapers here, I see the nature of television shows and what people talk about. If it isn't about what starlets were caught kissing who, who is cheating on who, who is pregnant ... outside of what "the terrorists" are doing, it's of little interest to the majority of mainstream Americans. My observations of the US social demographics have nothing to do with my connection to Islam. The US is the land of sexual plenty and freedom. Go online and look at The Village Voice online. That is the high water mark of sexual freedom. And those people are miserable! Sexuality has been reduced in pop culture to a competition sport similar to hand ball. Yes, all puns shamelessly intended. Forget Islam in this conversation. It's a problem in the US and if you live here and don't know that, you're either blind or living in a very small town. Look at the rates of divorce where parents throw each other away the second a better model comes available. Look at the attitudes that dictate that sexual fun and games is the most important thing in any relationship and the minute it's no longer some glorious orgy of excitement, throw out the relationship and get some new exciting version. I am fifty-seven years old, not a prude or a fussy school marm, and I have watched this among my peers for decades. Look at the talk shows, the reality shows, the Oprahs and the rest of those people ..... it's ALL about who's having weird sex with who. Sex is great, don't get me wrong, but as education levels drop, it assumes a larger role in culture and in human life and fills in the gaps that other engagements would fill and comes to be the sole preoccupation. I see it. Don't pretend it's not so. And it has come to be more prominent as education and self examination and intellectual pursuits have dropped in popularity. The "elites" people gripe about are educated, they have sex, but that's not all they are doing in the world and so they become, well, elite by virtue of doing things other than talk and plan and gossip about sex. And frankly (may as well offend everyone here) this is one of my problems with traditional cultures where women are excluded from public life. When all they have to do in life is deliver live infants, bathe and feed them, and service sperm donors .... women become pretty stupid too and that's all they think about and gossip about and talk about. Kids and how they got them and who's having kids, or not. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out. And then men think women are stupid because all they can talk about is kids and sex and husbands. Gee ....what a surprise.

>>Go online and look at The Village Voice online.

I don't even know what that is. Perhaps that could be a clue that not everyone outside of SF and NYC are as plugged in to the elites' / literatti's cultures of depravity. America does not equal what celebrities do. And, just because "People Magazine" and the Enquirer are on sale in each supermarket doesn't mean they are wholly representative of American culture. Fact is, I've never actually seen anyone reading either of them in the grocery line the few years I've lived in this particular community.

Point is: lots of people sensationalize the sleaze, but outside of the elites, I've only infrequently encountered someone who themselves have done such sleaze. PS, never believe 3rd hand locker room talk; its all bluster...

>>And then men think women are stupid because all they can talk about is kids and sex and husbands. Gee ....what a surprise.

I totally agree on that and believe it or not, I do understand the other points you are conveying, I just don't fully agree on all it out of not having the same kinds of experiences / acquaintances you have.

America does not equal what celebrities do. >>>

The thing is Omar, the US is a huge and only loosely connected aggregate of many, many unconnected and conflicting things. I am drawing my impressions from what sells in the media attached to popular culture. But a lot of Americans believe the US is ONLY their idealized vision of it and everybody else is a tiny irrelevant minority, or worse yet, the evil enemy. You are welcome to defend and cherish your idealized America. But it does not exist. It's nothing but a bunch of people who do all the same things as people everywhere else in the world. And this mythologized vision of America and Americans, I just don't see any evidence of it, anywhere, outside PR brochures designed to buy complicity or silence, or sell product.