I understand that interrogation torture being ineffective is not a common knowledge and media doesn't really help with reinforcing the contrary among regular people, but what's been bugging me: don't torturers know that? I remember you saying that a lot of torturers justify doing this to themselves as necessary, but it just seems odd that none of them would notice the overarching pattern? Especially if it's an organisation where it's a long standing practice.
Good question. There’sactually a book due out later in September that I’m hoping could shed a littlemore light on these sorts of questions. (It’s by F Sironi who is a psychologist, has been a keyplayer in numerous big human rights abuse trials and spent hundreds of hoursinterviewing torturers).
The truth is at the momentwe don’t actually know an awful lot about torturers’ mind sets.
We know from bothinterviews and experiments involving pain and empathy with ordinary people thattorturers develop profound mental health problems. And we know that broadlyspeaking they have similar symptom patterns to victims.
Most of the rest isbasically what we can guess from interviews and trial notes.
I’m not a psychologistso while I can describe behaviour patterns I’ve seen across multiple interviewsand works that analyse this kind of thing….be aware that my guesses as to why this might be the case are just that.I’m drawing from Fanon’s two interviews with torturers (and his interview witha torturer’s daughter), Rejali’s analysis of why torture continues, Cobain’sanalysis of British torturers and Alleg’s account of his torturers. Some ofthese can show up together, some of them can’t.
1) It becomes a point of pride that the group tortures,connected with their masculinity and ‘toughness’. Suggesting it doesn’t work isan attack on the close-knit group of torturers and risks being ostracisedsocially or physically attacked.
2) Admitting torture doesn’t work means admitting thegroup/individual did something wrong,immoral and dangerous. This can be very difficult for people to do. It meansessentially admitting they are theBad Guy. I think this response sounds very similar to the sort of mentalgymnastics sexual predators seem to go through to convince themselves that they personally aren’t rapists.
3) Many torturers don’t seem to care about information. They seetheir victims as essentially bad people who deserveto be tortured. This seems especially prevalent when the attacks are againstminorities or vulnerable people.
4) Some torturers seem to see torture as a means of revenge forcrimes, real or imagined. An example would be many of the American soldiers responsible for abusesin jails in Iraq brought up 9/11. The logic appeared to be that the victimswere ‘close enough’ to the perpetrators that the attacks were justified.
5) Some torturers appear to defend their actions simply becauseif they didn’t they might be out of a job.
6) Genuine delusion about tortures effectiveness may play apart. Rejali quotes an example of a torturer who swore that this technique‘worked every time’….as quoted by a victim who said nothing. The torturer didnot appear bothered by this.
7) One of the men responsible for the widespread torture byFrench troops during the Franco-Algerian war later said that torture underminedthe French cause and produced no positive results. But he didn’t want to hold his troops back at the time because he felt that would be betraying them.
Essentially torturersform incredibly close knit mini-communities within larger structures, such asthe police or army. They usually become ostracised from the rest of the community and much of theiridentity seems to rest on willingness to torture. In these cases rejectingtorture means rejecting both the group and individual identity.
Torturers also tend tosee themselves as acting to ‘defend’ their broader community/race/religion etc.They often see themselves as just, good, people punishing wicked people.
And they always have a vested interest in torturecontinuing and being accepted. If it doesn’t they may lose their jobs or worsebe put on trial and end up in prison.
The woman whose book Iam waiting for said that the torturers she’s interviewed over the years seemuniformly unwilling to confront what they did. They don’t want to do the hard work of looking at their actions and acceptingthey were in the wrong. Because that sort of therapy is intense and painful and hard.
So I don’t think it’snecessarily that they don’t notice the pattern. I think that the effect torturehas on them means that after awhile…they just don’t care.
If that seems difficultto understand think of how emotive and emotional arguments over whether torturefor information is ‘right’ in newspapers get. Have you ever seen an argumenthalf as emotive about whether dusting for fingerprints is a valid way ofconfirming someone’s presence at a crime scene?
If information was thepoint the ‘debate’ would not be so heated. If information was the point then wewould simply use the methods that seem to produce results.
But it’s not aboutinformation. It’s not about finding the truth or protecting people or creatingeffective organisational structures.
It’s about fear andanger and ideas of ‘punishment’. It’s about our tendency to lash out. It’sabout the fact that ultimately we often respond to perceived insults by wishingviolence on other people.
We imagine it would besatisfying.
And we imagine that thepeople we see as our enemies are not people. We focus on the terrible thingsthey’ve done (real or imagined) and tell ourselves they’re not really people.
They are people. All ofthem. Even the ones who have done terrible things. Even the ones we hate themost.
I’ve seen apologistsrail against the idea of talking to a mass murderer over a cup of tea. Theevidence strongly suggests it’s a good way to get accurate information. Butthat doesn’t account for human beings hating and wanting revenge.
Yes there is a pattern.And the pattern says that torture for information does not and can never work.But ultimately? I believe torturers do not want to see it.
Edit: There have been some good additions to this discussion and the recommendation of J Conroy’s book in particular is a good one. It’s not a book I’ve read yet but it’s recommended by a lot of people in the field.
Edit 2: Damn there were a lot of typos in this.
