REJALI'S BIG LIE: THE STUPID, CARING TORTURER

This morning, when I was searching for Darius Rejali's e-mail, because I thought it only fair to send him a copy of my latest blog, I came across something which infuriated me, although I have now, to my equal fury, lost it. It was an article by Rejali, which ends with the comment that torturers "care, they really care." Presumably he meant they care what we think of them. And by implication, because Rejali insists in the face of all the evidence that our government is torturing in order to obtain information, that they care about saving human lives. It called to mind the following imaginary dialogue between Rejali and his hypothetical torturer. I visualized some dumb thug, bending over a poor wretch, with the erudite Rejali, armed with his books and charts, tapping him on the shoulder:

Rejali: "What are you doing, sir?"

Torturer: "I'm waterboarding this terrorist. I'm still mad as hell about 9/11, and I've got to find out when the next terrorist attack will be, because I don't want my children-- I don't want no more innocent Americans to be killed by these terrorist scum. By the way, [standing up] you're not supposed to know about this-- it's top secret."

Rejali: "I know it's top secret, but I heard about it on the evening news. And what I came to tell you is that what you are doing will not get you the information you want. [pulling out a chart] Here, look at this. The bar chart shows the incidence of the kind of torture you are practicing in democracies. And if you will read my latest work [handing him a book,] you will see that torture never is useful for the elicting of good intelligence."

Torturer: [looking at the chart and book] "Uh, thanks, Professor-- I didn't know. But I guess you know better..."

Rejali: "Yes, and furthermore, I know that if you keep doing what you are doing, the people of our great democracy, who are not supposed to know that you're doing it, won't like you."

Torturer: "Won't like me? Oh. Gee I don't want to be disliked. Guess I should stop..."

How nice it would be if this fantasy were true! But of course, as I have asserted over and over again in previous blogs, there is abundant evidence that our government does not torture in order to elicit "actionable intelligence" but rather false confessions and terror. The real torturer is in fact very slick and shrewd. He knows exactly what he is doing, and that it works very well indeed for his purpose. So all of Rejali's statistics and charts are irrelevant to him. And there is another undeniable fact which should have made Rejali wonder.

When I sent a copy of an article I had written on torture to Noam Chomsky, he wished me success, saying, "I have a feeling that the doors are opening on this topic." He might have said "the market", but then of course, Chomsky doesn't use words like that. But the fact is, torture has become a marketable commodity-- so long as one does not challenge official "truths" and sticks to the comfortable old arguments and the comfortable old illusions which go along with them. Mine didn't, and correspondingly, I have not been able to find a publisher. By contrast, the public's sudden fascination with torture is expanding Rejali's career. And why is that? Just because the majority of people have a morbid fascination with the topic? No doubt they do, but that has always been the case. What has changed things? Rejali has said that democracies torture. In that he is right. Human nature being what it is, they do-- sporadically and very secretively. He has said furthermore that the kind of torture practiced by democracies is stealthy, designed to disguise the fact that torture is taking place. In that he is right as well. So I would like to ask him, why is it that our government is no longer making any secret of the fact that it tortures?

To be sure, it has officially denied that it does. But the evidence for its torturing is so overwhelming that no American can be ignorant concerning it. It confronts us at least once a week, and frequently more often than that, on the evening news, and newspaper headlines. Yet this is a democracy, and hence it is supposed to be keeping its torturing a secret. Have journalists become more adept at ferreting out the government's secrets? Actually the evidence suggests that the press, like our Congress, courts and just about every other institution in American life, become far more timid about challenging our government since 9/11. And reporters usually don't last long in their profession if they leak things the government does not want leaked. Some revelations seem almost to have been deliberately planted. Take for instance the meetings that took place between Dick Cheney and then-DCIA Porter Goss with John McCain over his Detainee Treatment Act which has been described as "banning torture" but was in fact designed to faciltate torture. Those meetings could have been held secretly, and yet the press was told about them. Why? Has it occurred to Rejali that our government may now be making a transition from democracy to totalitarianism? That the policies which have caused so much misery abroad, in places like Vietnam and Rejali's own Iran, have, to use Douglas Valentine's words, "come home to roost"?

In fact, the revelations which have caused Rejali's career to boom are part of an organized campaign of terror. In stark contrast to earlier times, when, folowing Rejali's rule, our government kept quiet about its torturing, it now wants us to know about it. Why? Because it knows that although it can sell the lie of a worldwide terrorist conspiracy which is threatening our lives to the majority of Americans, there will always be a significant minority who will see through this lie. Those who cannot be won over through deceit must be brought into line through terror. And make no mistake about it, our government, which has become every bit as ruthless and vicious as the Shah's, has every intention of carrying out the implied threat that we are so often confronted with. It expects us to cower in terror at the thought. What it has not counted upon is that some of us still possess enough of what our Founders would have called "Republican virtue"-- that is to say, a fierce love of liberty-- to be outraged at what is happening, and that rage can overcome their fear. Indeed, it must. For if we fall for the comforting half-truths offered by Rejali, and envision the torturers as stupid or, to use a word often employed by Amnesty International, "men who feel impotent", they will certainly win. They do not feel impotent, because they are not-- they are vastly powerful but their power rests upon deceit. Only in refusing to buy their lies and speaking the truth can we defeat them. And in this regard, Rejali's contribution is a bit more modest than his reputation would suggest.