Rafael Alfaro

You can Sleep Sound Tonight

Our enemies today are not countries clearly labeled out in a map, they are not fighting for a flag or under a uniform. They are composed of radical individuals operating under a highly sophisticated underground network that they purposefully make impossible to trace. I am talking about terrorist organizations and insurgent groups; organizations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS that use extreme measures to make political statements. I don’t care about how they do it, whether they use religion or manipulate the facts to bring support to their cause does not matter. In the end, these are the radical individuals that make the world unsafe who cannot be reasoned with. Sometimes these individuals hold valuable information that can lead to saving hundreds, maybe thousands of lives and so torture is necessary to extract that information.

I recognize the delicate subject that this is and I do not intend to deviate my audience from the important facts that constitute this issue. Before continuing a discussion about torture and when it should be used, I want to address the counterargument of international law. It is important to recognize two things about it. First, it is unrelated to the framework of terrorism. Second, prohibition of torture was not established under the precedence of terrorism.

As declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, torturing human beings is against international norms and the United States signed and ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture so it is obliged to do what this treaty entails inside American soil. However, it is well known that international law is often irrelevant because there is a higher regard for respecting a country’s sovereignty. In an article written by two political science professors from Brigham Young University, it is stated, “it is important not to overstate the constraints imposed by international treaties like CAT (Convention Against Torture). States remain sovereign entities and most international treaties lack enforcement mechanisms” (Goodliffe & Hawkins, 2006). This is why the United States has had so much support in its war against terror and there has been hardly any international controversy about policies that allow for enhanced interrogation techniques. Also, over 40 countries gave aid to the United States in the War in Afghanistan including Great Britain, Germany, and France (Rogers, 2011).

It is also important to recognize that human rights treaties were put into effect in the late 80s after increasing precedence of torture and other human rights violations had taken over international dialogues. Many of these violations were taking place in Latin American totalitarian regimes for which states and international organizations began to mobilize to confront this issue. Prohibition against torture was therefore not established under the context of protecting terrorists and terrorism had not even reached the level of precedence that it has today.

Just recently on October 3, 2014, ISIS beheaded a British aid worker, Alan Henning, who had been volunteering in Syria. His convoy was stopped by ISIS troops and he was kidnapped for being the only member of the convoy who was Christian. Even after some negotiations between the British government and ISIS, Henning was executed with a dull knife to his neck. The reasons proclaimed by ISIS clearly revealed that it was to make a statement against British military campaigns against ISIS (BBC News, 2014). Similar cases of inhumane types of beheadings have been occurring over the past month on American and British aid workers (CNN, 2014). These are civilians who volunteered to go to the Middle East to help and ended up being executed in this inhumane manner by this terrorist group. If this is what they do to people who come to help, I don’t want to know what they do to their real enemies. 

I have specifically used an Islamic form of terrorism as an example as it is the most prevalent at this period in time, but there have been many other groups who act in these barbaric ways so I am in no way arguing about the dangers of the Islamic state. Islam or religion in general is simply a vehicle that an organization can use to bring others to join their cause. Here I am specifically referring to the individuals who carry out cruel acts of warfare who have no respect for human rights and human life.

So what happens when you catch one of them? You ask him where his friends are and what they are up to. You do this in frustration because the possible consequences of not knowing what they know are horrific. You do it while keeping in mind that these individuals have an incredible desire to bring harm to your fellow countrymen. You do it because you don't want to see 3,000 Americans murdered in cold blood again. Yes, I think the United States has good reasons for torturing to extract information and its use has been justified. Forget about any moral arguments, these are individuals who don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy. Are there any moral issues in torturing someone who want to kill you or you countrymen? Who only want to inflict pain to those they find to disagree with their ideals?

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Americans don't want to accept that their country has been forced into doing horrible things in order to prevent bad things from happening. People are not ready to accept that this is the world that we have inherited. The truth is that throughout history, the United States and other countries have experienced what happens when there is lack of action during times of war. Today, war on terror has shown us some of the most horrific consequences when there is lack of action. In the book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll portrays a wide historical outline of how American security organizations failed to respond to various clues that led to the attacks of 9/11. Some of these events include the attacks in the World Trade Center in 1993 and the USS Cole in 2000. Another big part of Coll’s argument is that the United States underestimated the terrorist organizations that were emerging and believed that these were matters that would never come to American soil (Coll, 2004).

Forget about the romanticizing of war and the honor in it, this never existed; it has only been a way to cope with it. People began to realize this during the War in Vietnam where the media played a tremendous role in portraying the reality of war and making the conflict highly unpopular (Hallin, 1989). It is also the first large-scale war where the United States was fighting insurgent groups. It was here that our military learned what a difficult task it was to fight irregular forces. However, the risks were not as high in Vietnam; we only had to worry about protecting our troops. Today, we are still fighting insurgent groups and it is now to protect innocent civilians as well.

Torturing terrorists during interrogation sessions is justified and it saves both military and civilian lives. It is basically the only way to extract information from these individuals and as mentioned before, these are people who cannot be reasoned with and who do not deserve anyone’s sympathy. There is truth in saying that the United States was provoked during the attacks of 9/11 but the truth is that we have a long history of fighting insurgent groups. Sadly, it is from a long experience of warfare that we have come to learn what methods are effective and what the consequences are of not implementing these methods. It is therefore not the first time that the United States has been in a position like this but it is certainly the first time where the possibilities are this bad.

References

"Alan Henning 'killed by Islamic State'" BBC News 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 3 Nov. 2014. <http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29485405>.

Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. 2004. Penguin Press. pp. 695 pages. ISBN 1-59420-007-6.

Goodliffe, Jay, and Darren G. Hawkins. "Explaining Commitment: States and the Convention Against Torture." Journal of Politics 68.2 (2006): 358-71. Print.

Gronke, P., et al. "US Public Opinion on Torture, 2001-2009." PS-POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICS 2010: 437-44. Web. 

Hallin, Daniel C. The Uncesored War: The Media and Vietnam. 1989. Print.

"ISIS Video Claims to Show Beheading of Alan Henning; American Threatened." CNN 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 3 Nov. 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/03/world/meast/isis-alan-henning-beheading/>.

Parry, John T. Understanding Torture Law, Violence, and Political Identity. Ed. John T. Parry. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Mich., 2010. Web. 

Rogers, Simmons; Lisa Evans. “Afghanistan troop numbers data: how many does each country send to the Nato mission there?” The Guardian. 22 June 2011.  

Torture : Does it make Us Safer? is it Ever OK? : A Human Rights Perspective. Eds. Kenneth Roth, Minky Worden, and Amy D. Bernstein. New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, New York, 2005. Print.