WHY HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS ARE IMPOTENT TO STOP TORTURE

The true goal of torture by the United States government is not the acquisition of intelligence which can save lives. That is an established fact. From its inception, the CIA has been conducting experiments (under programs such as BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, and MKULTRA) to see if it can create a "Manchurian Candidate". Such programs used methods amounting to torture to reduce people to a state of infantile dependence so that a new identity and memory could be implanted in them by means of narco-hypnosis. The techniques they used, such as electroconvulsive treatment or ECT, severe sensory deprivation, and mind control drugs including LSD, have no conceivable use in genuine interrogation, that is to say, the quest for truth. They were used instead to create falsehood: a false identity, false memories, false confessions. The argument that during the Cold War, they served a legitimate purpose in creating the "perfect spy", are easily answered by the rhetorical question, "Would any self-respecting CIA officer voluntarily submit himself to such a regime in order to conduct more effective espionage?" Of course not. As I have argued in preceding blogs, and as is clear from Alfred McCoy's A Question of Torture and Colin Ross' The CIA Doctors, these methods were designed to be used against unwilling victims in order to make them into whatever our government wanted them to be. Recent evidence that Mohammed Al Qahtani, a member of the Guantánamo Six and client of the Center for Constitutional Rights, was subjected to this regime emerges from the fact that, according to a CCR factsheet, IV injections were forcibly administered to him during interrogation, a clear indication that he had been drugged and probably hypnotized. Of course he would not remember what he felt or experienced as a result of those injections, for the creation of amnesia surrounding the implantation of false memories is one of the goals of the CIA's PSYWAR program. The Guantánamo Six and their fellow-prisoners are probably the modern equivalent of "Manchurian candidates": CIA-manufactured terrorists.

Why is it then that the anti-torture movement persists in maintaining that torture "doesn't work"? For indeed that is the constant refrain of organizations such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. Quite obviously torture works if one's goal is an evil one. And if the goal of torture by our government is not the acquisition of intelligence, then the argument that "torture doesn't work" for that purpose is quite irrelevant. Not only that, it gives our opponents far too much credit in assuming that they are simply overzealous interrogators angry about the events of 9/11 and desperate to ferret out facts which will prevent another such catastrophe. In fact, they are far more sinister than that, as evil as Hitler and vastly more powerful and cunning. Why will anti-torture activists not face this reality? I think because of their background in the tradition of pacifism and civil disobedience. Ingrained in many people of my generation is the notion that if they themselves behave morally, they can somehow shame their opponents into doing the same. This requires opponents which have a conscience and a basic sense of decency. To recognize that the opponents we are facing today have neither is to realize that whether we are sincere or insincere, whether we approach them in a nonviolent manner or with Molotov cocktails, whether we aim at the restoration of the U.S. Constitution or the erection of some secular or religious utopia, they will be equally likely to target us as they have anyone who opposes them. And that is a frightening possibility.

The U.S. executive branch as it exists today is the most powerful government which has ever existed. In addition to the most sophisticated methods of drawing forth false confessions, it also possesses the most lethal arsenal of weapons of mass destruction-- nuclear, space, and other weapons (such as scalar) which most people have never heard of. Thus it represents the most dangerous force with which the mankind has ever had to contend. Every conscientious individual in the world, and every nation which has any self-respect, has to live with the fact that it is faced with a terrible choice. It can kowtow to this force and lose all its freedom and dignity, in the process permitting the outrageous abuses to continue. Or it can oppose it, at the risk of essentially committing suicide. That is to say, the nation which fights back against the United States will most likely be destroyed, and the individual-- American or foreign, who opposes its government will be killed or forced to take his own life lest he be subject to its tortures. This is a prospect that most human rights activists today evidently cannot face. And if they do not face it, they will inevitably lose. In order to win, they must face the fact that they may have to give up their lives. For in our fight against the face of the perfect totalitarianism which is taking shape in this country-- more effective than that of the Nazis or the Stalinists-- death can be a victory. As O'Brien says in Orwell's 1984: "We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we can never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation." When I first read this as a teenager in the nineteen-sixties (I have read it many times since), I vowed that if I were ever faced with such a situation I would essentially stage a kamikaze attack upon Big Brother, fighting back in a manner which would ensure my instant death, so that the forces of repression could not transform me into a turncoat of their own making. And I still think that is the best solution.

This is not that we necessarily have to die. But we must be prepared to do so because our enemy is utterly vicious, ruthless and without scruple. This is war, and as much as one wishes to live, in a war one must be prepared to die. Pollyannish and pacifistic notions of "shaming" one's opponents into reform will only earn their laughter. They could not be happier when their opponents stick to the tired old argument that "torture does not work" because then they know that they have succeeded in deceiving them as to their true purpose. They also know that it works very well if the goal is to produce an empty shell of a human being into which they can pour their own filth. Let us make it clear that we are wise to them, and intend to fight the real enemy with every means at our disposal, not set up some innocuous "straw man" in order to reassure ourselves. If the choice is between arguing ineffectually against torture and thus ensuring our continued survival, and waging an effective battle against the Monster in Washington DC at the risk of our lives, let us choose to fight and die free!!!