Wednesday, May 30, 2007
(10:05 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Fun with Torture
Remember how Illinois Senator Dick Durbin tearfully apologized for suggesting American interrogation techniques looked like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union to him? Well, as it turns out, the interrogation techniques are explicitly modeled on what the Soviet Union was believed to do to its prisoners.I recommend reading the entire article. The idea that the techniques of marketting are more effective than torture in generating compliance is virtually a summary of Discipline and Punish.
Since 24 is mentioned in the article, this seems like an appropriate time to bring up a reinterpretation of a scene from this season. After Jack rescues Assad from the missile strike (in the first few episodes), they take Assad's subordinate, who is working as a mole for the evil Fayyed, to an empty house. Jack decides not to torture him, apparently because his experience of two years in a Chinese torture camp has left him squeamish, but Assad steps up to the plate and gets the necessary information by stabbing the guy in the kneecap. As a result, Jack and Assad are able to stop a suicide bombing.
The overt message of the scene seems to be that Jack needs to toughen up. But there seems to be another message at work, too. Before killing the guy, Assad tells him that he believes he has given all the information and that he respects his conviction, but that it was misdirected. One almost begins to think that the torture is conceived as a way of showing respect, of taking the guy seriously -- a secret handshake of sorts. Had Jack actually gone forward with the torture, the guy might not have responded the same way. He thought Assad had "gone soft" by trying to negotiate with the West, but the use of torture shows that he's still tough.
So the message isn't simply that torture is effective and one must be willing to do the sadly necessary thing -- it's that the culture of terrorists is in part predicated on torture, that it's the most effective means of communication even within their own circle.
