Ariel Dorfman shares the pain of the torture victims he met in Chile in his piece Are we really so fearful? and Haitian refugee Edwidge Danticat tells the story of two women horribly disfigured and scarred (emotionally and physically) for life in her editorial Does it Work?.
Dorfman then sums up this nightmarish place that Americans now find themselves in as their government takes on an issue that is so absolutely horrifying that any actual debate about the subject just leaves one in shock.
I will leave others to claim that torture, in fact, does not work, that confessions obtained under duress -- such as that extracted from the heaving body of that poor Argentine braggart in some Santiago cesspool in 1973 -- are useless. Or to contend that the United States had better not do that to anyone in our custody lest someday another nation or entity or group decides to treat our prisoners the same way.
I find these arguments -- and there are many more -- to be irrefutable. But I cannot bring myself to use them, for fear of honoring the debate by participating in it.
Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?
Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?
These two authors place right in front of us the stories of innocent people who were so inhumanely treated that one can't even begin to imagine how they managed to live through their ordeals at the hands of torturers without consciences. And that's exactly what it takes to be a torturer - a complete lack of identification with their victims as human beings and the ability to wake up the next day and do it all over again.
I've written at length, since I took up blogging, about this issue of torture and if there ever comes a day when it becomes just another topic on my daily list of posts to shed some light on - that doesn't evoke these extremely painful feelings I experience with each new entry - then I'll know that I too have become desensitized to the horror that occurs on a daily basis around the world in the name of countries and governments that have so lost their moral compasses that one just can't help but believe this nightmare will never end.
It's sad. It's painful. It enrages me. But we, in western society, are still so uncomfortable even discussing it that we would rather allow it to happen than to speak out forcefully against it. And, when we try to, we're told not to worry - that the US doesn't torture people, that the RCMP weren't really that complicit in sending Maher Arar to Syria where he was tortured for months on end (it can't have been that important since the cowardly RCMP commissioner can't even bring himself to make a public statement about the final report of the Arar commission that damned his agency) - that our governments are on top of things and will ensure that no one will ever be tortured again. Or, in Bush's case, that they'll only be tortured by methods he approves.
So, where are we then? Are we afraid? Are we in shock? Are we stunned? Do we actually care? Are we willing to allow torture to keep occurring until it happens to one of us? One of our family members? Our friends? Will that be enough to demand that, once and for all, this insanity and inhumanity comes to an end? Left-wingers and right-wingers alike?
As for any Americans reading this post, isn't the fact that your government has admitted hiding and torturing detainees (kidnap victims) overseas enough to cause an complete overhaul of your government? Now? If not, what will it take? Because I and millions of others out here would really like to know.
Someone is being waterboarded right now.
Someone is being severely beaten.
Someone is suffering from hypothermia.
Someone is being sexually assaulted.
Someone is being bitten by a dog.
Someone is being starved.
Someone is so psychologically confused from all of the blaring lights and pounding music that he doesn't want to live anymore.
And someone is probably dying as we speak.
What will it take?
Please. Just make this pain go away for all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment