The Allen Almanac

What is torture? For some reason this seems to be all over the news lately. Our president says that the Geneva Conventions are too vague. (At least he admits he doesn’t understand something for once.) So I felt it was my patriotic duty to help the president out. In 1994 the US signed UNCAT (United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment) a UN treaty that dealt with this very question:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a 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. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

President Clinton was mocked when he asked what the definition of “is” is, yet this president is allowed to ask for clarity on what torture’s is? A judge once famously stated (paraphrased), “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.” Well, torture falls under that umbrella too. Any ten year old can tell you what torture is (though I doubt many could define is).

Defining what acts are and what acts are not torture is a very dangerous mistake on the part this nation. If our species is gifted with any special skills, there is none more utilized than out ability to invent new and innovative ways of hurting each other. Any possible list would be incomplete. Therefore, any list would just be the list of tortures to avoid. It is a hydra that this nation should find no value in fighting. My crazy idea is that if you have to ask if what you are doing is torture, it probably is. We shouldn’t even be near the areas where we start asking ourselves if what we are engaged in is torture.

There is a letter from a Gulf War (I) veteran on his experiences in that war on Andrew Sullivan’s blog in the spirit of Colin Powell’s letter.

…they could have fought. Not won, no they couldn’t have won, but they could have fought. Instead, they chose to surrender.

Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men’s heads was that they knew, absolutely, that they’d get fair treatment from us, the Americans. We were the good guys. The Iraqis on the line knew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away. (A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.) Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were.
…
Its gone now, even from me. I can’t get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires and I’m not what you’d call a sensitive type. You know the picture. And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House, trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn’t torture. That hypothermia isn’t torture. That degradation isn’t torture. We don’t have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think. And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight. How many Marines’ lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this asshole who never once risked anything for this country?