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On Torture, America Must Reckon with More than Gina Haspel
Trumps choice here for our CIA Director is inexplicable. Hopefully, Gina Haspel will not be confirmed by the US Senate.
Related: Gina Haspel, Trump’s Choice for C.I.A., Played Role in Torture Program
Rand Paul Issues Filibuster Threat on Trump’s State and CIA Nominees
By Nate Chrostiansen
March 17, 2018
Writing in 1958, Jean-Paul Sartre pondered the tortured victims of French colonialism and wondered how his country could have fallen so completely. “Happy are those who died without ever having had to ask themselves: ‘If they tear out my fingernails, will I talk?’” Sartre wrote. “But even happier are others, barely out of their childhood, who have not had to ask themselves that other question: ‘If my friends, fellow soldiers and leaders tear out an enemy’s fingernails in my presence, what will I do?’” The same question now looms over the United States, as it has ever since we debased ourselves by accepting torture. In doing so we have foolishly squandered our reputation and endangered critical alliances. Gina Haspel’s prospective nomination as the next CIA director indicates to our allies that we have learned nothing, and perhaps we have not. Refusing to clearly confront past atrocities has only made their repetition more likely, and harmed our national security by sowing distrust and resentment the world over. Because we have never confronted our odious legacy of torture and black-masked kidnappings domestically, allies may now be forced to choose between their obligation to international law and loyalty to an old friend.
James Mitchell, one of the psychologists who charged the U.S. government millions of dollars while shaping its torture program, has sought to shirk his responsibility by claiming that “we were soldiers doing what we were instructed to do.” His defense draws uncomfortably near to that given by the defendants at Nuremberg, and should give us pause. In today’s United States there live men and women who conspired to drown people so that they could revive them and then drown them again. Gina Haspel’s nomination is therefore more than a momentary political problem. It underscores a festering sickness in our society that grows from our unfounded presumption that we are above atrocity. The idea that torture was done in service of the nation begets the question of what sort of nation is served by it. “Anyone who is tortured remains tortured,” wrote Austrian philosopher and Auschwitz survivor Jean Améry, “anyone who has suffered torture never again will be able to be at ease in the world, the abomination of the annihilation is never extinguished. Faith in humanity, already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again.” This is true not just of torture’s victims but of its perpetrators, enablers, and purported beneficiaries. The most enduring harm done to our nation has come not from the external enemies who challenge us, dangerous though they may be, but rather from our own tolerance for depravity when it is done in our name. The former we can confront with clear hearts, while the latter will fester until it sours our nation.
Trumps choice here for our CIA Director is inexplicable. Hopefully, Gina Haspel will not be confirmed by the US Senate.
Related: Gina Haspel, Trump’s Choice for C.I.A., Played Role in Torture Program
Rand Paul Issues Filibuster Threat on Trump’s State and CIA Nominees