‘Yes, yes! Elvis and I assassinated JFK! Now will you please remove the electrodes from my scrotum?’

Posted by Morbo

Last week I ranted about Americans’ increasing inability to grasp a moral argument. Nowhere is this more in evidence lately than the debate over outsourcing torture (oops, I mean “aggressive interrogation.”)

We should not even be having this debate. Terrorists blow children to bits and torture people, not great world powers that are supposedly guided by a commitment to human rights, decency and the rule of law.

Would the pro-torture right-wingers please read a book? It’s one of the oldest stories in the world: While fighting the horrible thing you fear the most, you become that thing yourself. It’s downright archetypal — and it’s happening to us. Roll over George Orwell.

Dig up the Feb. 14 issue of The New Yorker and read Jane Mayer’s piece, “Outsourcing Torture.” Then weep for your country because you won’t recognize it any longer.

I won’t go into too much detail here, but Mayer lays out how the U.S. government ships foreign nationals suspected of being tied to terrorists off to places like Egypt, which does not even pretend to recognize the norms of international law, where they are subjected to unimaginable things. Mind you, this happens to suspected terrorists or their suspected associates. So, the mere suspicion that you’re thick with al Qaeda or might possibly know someone who is can get you a one-way ticket to Cairo and a date with a black hood and tank filled with water up to your chin.

In case Bill O’Reilly is reading this or anyone else incapable of grasping the moral dimension of the issue, I will present a pragmatic argument: Torture doesn’t work. You see, a person being tortured will tell you anything you want to hear to make the pain stop.

Dan Coleman, a former FBI agent who worked with the CIA on anti-terrorism efforts, explains it to Mayer. If you have someone in custody that you really believe has done bad things or knows about bad things, you win him over by building “a personal relationship, even if you can’t stand them.”

You let them know, said Coleman, that America’s legal system gives them certain rights, and it’s in their interest to cooperate.

“The lawyers show these guys there’s a way out,” Coleman said. “It’s human nature. People don’t cooperate with you unless they have some reason to. Brutalization doesn’t work. We know that. Besides, you lose your soul.”

You lose your soul. For a nation fixated with fundamentalist forms of religion but increasingly no moral compass, that is a scary thing to give up.