The nomination of John Brennan for CIA Chief has drawn attention to the subject of torture, as he has been supporter of it. Let’s have first some reflections on the matter.

The debate about torture should not be about the guilty persons subject to torture; it should be about the innocents subject to torture. It is about police or military decisions on how to search for the guilty, for information; it is about who is “guilty”. It is also about killing innocents. At present torture has been discussed in relation to terrorist attacks. Why not applying this “procedure” to other cases such as kidnappings, robberies, etc.? After all, there is more than one despicable crime committed in the society which may cause thousands of deaths.

Torture is also about creating an industry of torture, with people specialized in it. After torturing, “officers in charge” go back to their families and mingle with the rest of the population even though they operate with totally different moral constraints.

Torture was formally abolished long ago, more than two hundred years in the Americas. The experience is very conclusive on what happens to societies that overlook such prohibitions.

Here there is a typical case of how torture could operate. A neighborhood is identified as the place where a terrorist named John lives. He is between 25 and 30 years old. There are about 20 persons meeting such description in that neighborhood. So, the officer in charge, pressured to find the terrorist, orders the arrest of the 20 men among which the suspected terrorist is supposed to be. The 20 individuals are subject to torture. One of them dies as the first “session” starts. He suffered from a heart problem he was not even aware of.  Other two follow suit but after several sessions. There are two detainees who resist the torture and convinced the “officers” that they have nothing to do with the “real” John. They are kept in (clandestine) jails for some years just in case. One of the persons learnt something important while in the process of being arrested and transported (i.e. the place where the clandestine torture center is). The operation dictates that no risk is to be taken. They kill him, just in case. A couple of the detained were left in a third country. In a small village they did not even know. Only one survived; the other was arrested by a tough police and died in jail. At the end, the interrogators get a less important terrorist collaborator. He may provide information of relative importance. The final conclusion by the “intelligent” analysts is that it was Peter, no John, the person they were after.

This example is not too hypothetical. It resembles what happened several times already: remember Abu Grave where people subject to torture were, for the most part, innocents?  Or the innocent German citizen arrested in Macedonia, tortured, found to be innocent and left to his own luck in a northern village in Albania? Who decides who to torture to? Just an officer subject to pressure in order to find somebody, to clarify some attacks or to prevent others will take the decision. He will take his or her decision in order to keep his/her job. If you allow torturing, you also allow killing as the limits are in many cases very thin and you can’t guarantee that the people subject to torture will survive. If you allow torturing, you allow raping, robing the possessions of the “tortured” one, threating the family of people arrested who pressure authorities to free the detainees. Torture means creating clandestine centers for detentions and torture unknown even to the very big bosses that authorized such policy. It also means allowing officers to have “fun” with suspected detainees and the (non) existence of “desaparecidos”. Just like Argentina or Chile in the 70s.

Torturing creates an industry, the industry of torture. People working in that industry will make sure to create their demand as they need, and probably enjoy, their jobs. They have power. They cannot operate in a different environment with so many legal and moral constraints. During the Stalin era, there were also quotas for arresting, killing and extracting information, whatever it meant. Any bureaucracy, including the one responsible for torturing, will proceed in a similar manner at the end of the day.

The so called officers of torture will return to their families at one point; they will drive cars and walk the streets. How will they behave with their spouses, children, neighbors? Imagine a minor traffic incident with one of those subjects who will most likely be armed. What type of dialogue can you sustain with a subject which communicates with other people in rather “different” ways?

The depressing aspect of this discussion is that there is even discussion in the USA about the usefulness of torture, about changing its name for “enhanced” interrogation. In some countries justifying a crime is itself a crime. That would be a crime indeed! That is a crime! It is shameful that the topic is even the subject of discussion in a country that considers itself a democratic one.