Even after more than a month of heated discussions, the 2016 election keeps appearing in the headlines of the latest news, or rather the winner of those elections is the main subject of media’s attention. This is not surprising, as in such a short time, Trump shook this country to the core, dividing parties and people. What was meant to bring unity and ‘make America great’ turned into a tug of war between two sections of the American population.
Nothing written above is news to us today, all the phrases have been written somewhere, all the opinions expressed. Nevertheless, new issues and discussions keep appearing and what most of us saw as rules written in stone now turned into wood planks that are about to catch fire. One of such ‘wood planks’ today is the president’s rather radical statement in reference to torture. The president declared that torture works but that he will leave a decision on whether to implement it as means of extracting information to the Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. This statement seems to be consistent with what Trump argued during his campaign, as can be seen in one of the CNN videos1. In his speech from 23rd of November, 2015 the future president of the United States argues, that ‘it {waterboarding} works … only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work’, which brings us directly to an issue at hand, how many so-called ‘stupid’ people are out there? Well, I am one of them.
There are several issues not only with the content of the statement but also with its choice of words. According to Article 2 of the ‘Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment’ adopted by the General Assembly of the UN, points one and three, ‘Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction’ and ‘An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture’2. What is meant by that is that torture, considering that the president used this exact word, is illegal under the international laws.
Now let’s move to the actual idea to which Donald Trump has been true to for at least a year. The main motivation behind such radical methods is the protection of the USA from the possible threat of terrorism. The president on a number of occasions argued that nothing would stop him from making this country safer for its citizens. A noble desire that for some reason turned into open calls for violence against the Muslim population. There is a clear contradiction that the president apparently believes to be inevitable.
Now, let’s get to the basics. The very idea of torment is to expose a person to a varying level of pain until he/she finally tells the truth. The irony is that the pain itself becomes the obstacle in acquiring the final goal – the truth. Just for a second imagine the amounts of pain certain accused are exposed to and that the only way of stopping that experience is by, for example, confessing the blame for whatever crimes he/she supposedly committed. I understand that some crimes might lead to a life-long sentence or even death penalty but after a prolonged period of torture, I believe death might seem as a blissful escape. What I am implying is that under that amount of pressure an innocent person might confess the blame simply to stop the torment.
Of course, torture is also used for extracting information. Then, there are two options: a person knows nothing or too little to suffice the tormentor, or a person knows exactly what they want to hear and then it is a question of motivation. In the first case, people are really at the mercy of the ones who torture them, as there is absolutely nothing they can do to help their situation. The second case, of course, is much trickier. There are a lot of variables such as the levels of pain tolerance of the accused, the preciousness of the information, the ideology, and the ultimate goal of the tormented. For example, if a person has high levels of pain tolerance and believes that the information he possesses is something worth enduring any amount of suffering for and even dying for, the time spent to break down that person would be better used devising a different plan on how to obtain the information, as well as trying different methods of interrogation, which do not include infinite amount of water and imitation of drowning.
In conclusion, I would like to say that being a representative of the generation, that was born on the border of two centuries with the ideas of eradicating the violent past of the Cold War, and looking into the not so far future of equality and respect, I still want to believe that the past is in the past and the future, where the most basic rights of people are cemented in the psychic of the population, is out there. We just need to work on its creation and look for modern and humane ways of dealing with the situations that arise in our already beautifully globalized world.
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