On his book Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition
Cover Interview of April 17, 2019
In a nutshell
The “American tradition” in this book’s subtitle is not a
particular method of tormenting the body. It refers instead to the debates that
Americans have waged regarding torture. At the outset I decided that it was not
feasible for me to produce an inventory of torture in the United States across
four centuries. My interest instead lies with how Americans have debated,
justified, and condemned torture. Like a minuet in which the dancers change
fashions over time, yet the steps remain the same, American debates about
torture have unfolded in predictable fashion. During these debates, Americans
invariably have invoked the nation’s utopian ambitions to serve as the exemplar
of modern democratic civilization. Torture, which Americans have associated
with barbarism or tyranny, cannot easily be squared with the notion that the
United States is a unique nation with uniquely humane laws and principles.
A common thread in American debates over torture is the
presumption that Americans should exist in a state of national innocence, with
torture held at arm’s length. Americans have been at best complacent and at
worst willful in presuming that torture is something that other people do
elsewhere. Any claims that torture is an exceptional aberration whenever
Americans commit it are difficult to reconcile with the history recounted in my
book. We cannot credibly claim that when other countries torture it reflects
their basic character, but when we torture it violates ours. The history of
torture in the United States, above all, reveals the toxic consequences when
rhetoric and policies that dehumanize “the enemy within” or a foreign foe
exploit popular anxiety about security. Appeals to security have been the
ultimate excuse for and defense of torture. When the preservation of rights is
believed to impede or diminish security, then rights have been jettisoned and
even the prohibition of torture has been conditional.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
In a nutshell
The “American tradition” in this book’s subtitle is not a particular method of tormenting the body. It refers instead to the debates that Americans have waged regarding torture. At the outset I decided that it was not feasible for me to produce an inventory of torture in the United States across four centuries. My interest instead lies with how Americans have debated, justified, and condemned torture. Like a minuet in which the dancers change fashions over time, yet the steps remain the same, American debates about torture have unfolded in predictable fashion. During these debates, Americans invariably have invoked the nation’s utopian ambitions to serve as the exemplar of modern democratic civilization. Torture, which Americans have associated with barbarism or tyranny, cannot easily be squared with the notion that the United States is a unique nation with uniquely humane laws and principles.
A common thread in American debates over torture is the presumption that Americans should exist in a state of national innocence, with torture held at arm’s length. Americans have been at best complacent and at worst willful in presuming that torture is something that other people do elsewhere. Any claims that torture is an exceptional aberration whenever Americans commit it are difficult to reconcile with the history recounted in my book. We cannot credibly claim that when other countries torture it reflects their basic character, but when we torture it violates ours. The history of torture in the United States, above all, reveals the toxic consequences when rhetoric and policies that dehumanize “the enemy within” or a foreign foe exploit popular anxiety about security. Appeals to security have been the ultimate excuse for and defense of torture. When the preservation of rights is believed to impede or diminish security, then rights have been jettisoned and even the prohibition of torture has been conditional.