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There has been a new bubble in discussion of torture by Americans in the blogs I read. In particular, Volokh and Instapundit commented on Andrew Sullivan’s observation that torture has found significant support in the US. Michelle Malkin chimes in to minimize what happened. It might be useful to look at the lessons of history, here. In particular, I would suggest an excellent book by William T Cavanaugh called “Torture and Eucharist.” This book is actually focused on a critique of the Chilean Catholic Church during the years of the disappearances, but the first part of the book is a learned and excellent discussion of the methods, the psychology, and the history of torture, particularly in Chile. One of the important things he notes is that the psychological torture employed by the Chilean junta, even more than the physical pain, had a specific effect. It is one, I think, that Americans who support torture may not appreciate:

“As the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas suggests, communities and the religious and political powers which control them often define their identity and the legitimate contours of their power through the ritual expulsion of that which pollutes and defiles. We misunderstand modern torture, however, if we fail to see that enemies of the regime are not so much punished as produced [emphasis his] in the torture chamber…. The Chilean torture apparatus, therefore, should not be seen simply as a response to a particular type of threat against the state. Torture is rather both the production of that threat and the response to it, and thus the ritual site at which the state produces the reality in which its pretentions to omnipotence consist.

For a regime such as that of General Pinochet, violence has the critical function of justifying itself. The story of an infamous helicopter trip wll make this clearer. When the coup took place on September 11, 1973, it overthrew Latin America’s most longstanding and stable democracy, with a proud tradtion of military subordination to civil power. Resistance among center and left parties was minimal, such that between the coup and the end of the year the military and police had lost only twenty-five people, with fifteen of those casualties coming on the day of the coup. The few pockets of armed resistance had been snuffed out decisively. Most expected a swift and relatively peaceful return to democracy. Much of what is written on the human rights record of the Pinochet regime is occupied with puzzling over how so much brutality could have taken place in Chile [given its history and tradition].

What many fail to see is that lack of resistance was a problem for the Pinochet regime, one which was solved by means of increased brutality. In October, 1973 the Junta dispatched General Sergio Arellano Stark on a helicopter tour of military installations where prisoners were being held. The official purpose of the trip was to review sentences for supporters of the Allende government and “to make uniform the criteria for the administration of justice.” What in fact happened was somewhat less benign. Everywhere the “Helicoptero de la Muerte” touched down, prisoners wwere taken out and shot… Most of those shot were still awaiting trial or serving light sentences. They were killed precisely because they posed only a slight threat. Upon General Arellano’s arrival at Talca, he asked Colonel Efriam Jana how many casualties his troops had sustained in subduing the area. When the Colonel replied that the region had been subdued peacefully, the General grew furious. “Later I understood,” Jana explained, that “[my attitude] did not square with the superior palns, which called for exacerbating military fury against the left.” The purpose of Arellano’s trip ws not merely to stimulate but rather to simulate the atmosphere of internal war that the regime needed to justify its policies. Violence was was used not as a response to threats to the state, but rather to create the threats from which the only possible protection was the state itself. … At issue is not “repression” as such, since there was little to repress, but rather production of chaos and the scripting of bodies into the drama of fear.”

Certainly, unlike those tortured and killed by the Pinochet regime, the prisoners at GTMO and in Iraq are not mostly innocents. However, the principle remains the same, and even if one ignores the moral dimension of these acts, it is counterproductive. The kind of degradation and torture committed there (and the degradation described at GTMO is a kind of psychological torture used to great effect by the Pinochet regime), is not one that results in the destruction of enemies as much as the production of them. Does any American really believe that prisoners so treated will be anything other than rabid enemies of the US until the day they die? More important, will their witness to their families, friends, neighbors, etc. promote the peace, or will it serve as justification for more desperate resistance? I am afraid that the US is creating, not destroying, enemies in this.

Check it out:

Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) (Paperback)
by William T. Cavanaugh, Blackwell Publishers