Hitchens' experience of waterboarding: a further step in the banalisation of torture

In June 2006, I was asked by a fellow blogger to join a group of bloggers writing against torture (their list can be found at the end of my blogroll).

I produced the following article. It was a réaction à chaud in which the very idea of a group of bloggers, living in democracies defined as the 'free world', having to write against torture practised by their own governments, seemed to me the proof that we were in the process of banalising torture.

What shocked me at the time was the 'talk' about torture. Not because we shouldn't talk about it. But because the general context for this talk was, in our 'freedom of speech loving societies', one for debate and not one for a clear condemnation.

Ever since, the debate has been going on. And to my great dismay, Christopher Hitchens, the 'liberal' Neo-con, has revived this 'talk' by actually experiencing waterboarding himself and publishing about his experience in vanity Fair 'Believe me it's torture'.

I find it shocking that the man who champions the intellect is asking us to 'believe'...him, that the man who champions reason hasn't been able to come up with a principled theoretical categorisation of waterboarding as torture. He tried to convince himself of the utility of torture on the basis of a very basic vulgar Benthamian concept of moral utility ( and what if torture does actually work, should we go for it ?), but never on the basis of its moral value to Human beings, the torturer and the tortured. And at the end, 'professor' Hitchens had to try it all by himself.

After having tried to solve, from the depth of his own 'liberal' intellect, the theoretical underpinnings of waterboarding, and failed to come up with a clear categorisation, hesitating between 'extreme interrogation' or 'outright torture', Hitchens had to finally experience the thing himself, then turned to us asking us to 'believe' him that waterboarding is actually torture, as if there was some theoretical doubt about the whole thing.

I find it shocking that the mainstream press, the bloggers, and everybody else, including Hitchens ennemies, are lauding him as the great intellctual, the courageous one, who confirms, from the intellectual depth of his own experience, that waterboarding is torture. I find it shocking that not one publication explicitly refers to the article Hitchens published last year in Slate in which he flirts with torture. I find it shocking that this last year article, in which Hitchens hesitates in categorising waterboarding, between 'extreme interrogation' and 'outright torture', is nowhere to be found on the web (if anyone can find it for me, please send me the link or the whole text). I find it shocking that The Guardian reports about Hitchens' experience under the title 'Want to know if waterboarding is torture? Ask Christopher Hitchens'

I find it shocking that Hitchens cannot talk about torture simply. He has to add adjectives like 'outright torture' as if there were different kinds of torture. Can we talk about freedom as 'outright freedom' ? Can we talk about Human rights as 'outright Human rights'? Can we talk about free speech as 'outright free speech'? As if we can put some conditions on these basic values. And as Hitchens has taken upon him the challenge of the bloggers to actually experience waterboarding, I find the challenge very silly, opening up the field of moral abominations to personal experience, and condoning torture, and I find that the challenge has given the advocates of torture one more occasion to prove their point, despite Hitchens' conclusions.

Just think a bit, if Hitchens was able to take it, so will everybody else. Just think, if we need to actually experience an abomination to know that it is an abomination, moral judgement becomes unnecessary.

Just think that when a public 'intellectual' can feed his own fame, and that of those who challenge him, by not only debating torture but also experiencing it, and publicising this experience, something is definitely wrotten in our world.

To Hitchens I say: I am not a 'believer' and, in terms of moral judgement, my knowledge comes from my moral reasoning and from what I think of what a man or a woman ought to do to others, not from my own experience of abomination, and definitely not from a celebrity journalist with dubious moral judgment.

Hitchens's experience of waterboarding and the context surrounding it are testimonies to the evergrowing banalisation of torture. I am not reading anymore about this silly piece of public exhibitionnism, failed intellect, and complete moral failure.

Courrier International has linked to this post in the blogs section.

Reporters Without Borders' Secretary General Justifies Torture

Reporters Without Borders are seen as defenders of freedom of expression and liberal western values. So it doesn't come as a surprise that this NGO's secretary general, Robert Ménard, declares Torture to be legitimate in some cases. Why is RWB's endorsment of Torture is not a surprise ? Because there is no debate on Torture anymore in western socieites. We have adopted and banalised Torture. Torture is becoming mainstream. What did we do when we learned about Abu Ghraib ? What did we do when we learned of Guantanmo ? What did we do when we learned of Bush's secret prisons and extraordinary renditions ? Nothing. So it does not come as a surprise that those who hold western liberal values as their lightning rod express actually their acceptation of Torture. Torture is definitely going mainstream. The absence of a public debate about it is a schocking proof of its acceptation. Read the interview, the radio host did not actually react to Ménard. And the french press, in general, except Rue89, did not report the fact. There is nothing to say actually about Torture.

In a transcript of a radio interview given by Robert Ménard and revealed by the French online information website Rue89, Robert Ménard declares:

"On the dark side of the state, there is worse (then Torture I suppose, my emphasis). The movie adapted from the book of Marianne Pearl relating the kidnapping of her husband will be released soon (American movies are sometimes released with a three to six month delay in Europe, my emphasis).

That's not a romanced story. I spoke with Marianne Pearl about this when I was in the US for the movie première few weeks ago. We both recalled that US authorities knew who was holding Pearl hostage. What should they do ? What should they let do ? And what should they close their eyes on ? The Pakistani police took the families of the suspects as hostages, you hear me, and tortured those families in order to extract information on Pearl's kidnappers.

They had the information. But they were late to save Daniel. You know how he was killed and in which conditions, they cut his throat..

Where should we stop ? Should we accept this logic... In some cases we could. "They take hostages, we take hostages; They msitreat hostages, we mistreat them; they torture, we torture.."

What justifies this… Should we go to these limits in order to liberate a hostage ? That's a true question.

But that's real life, that's it, as François just said: we are not here in the world of ideas, there aren't principles anymore. I don't know what to think. Because it happened to Marianne Pearl, I am not saying, I wouldn't say that they were wrong in doing so because she thought that it should be done and that it is O.K., that they ought to save her husband; she was pregnant… For the baby who was going to come to life everything was permitted.

And they ought to save him, and if they were going to harm some people, we ought to do it; to harm them physically you understand, by threatening them and torturing, even if we had to kill some of them.

I don't know, I am lost, because at a certain point I don't know where we should stop, where should we set the cursor. What is acceptable and what is not ? And, at the same time, for the families of the kidnapped, because they are often the first we deal with and adress in the first place, at Reporters Without Borders; from a legitimate point of view, I, if it were my daughter who was taken hostage, there will be no limit, I tell you, I tell you (bis), there will be no limit (inaudible)...

Xavier de la Porte (radio host):
Then, it is better not to know what is going on.

Robert Ménard:
Yes, we shouldn't say it, what do you want ? Do you want to be told such stories ? Can you imagine, people will think … and they will be right to think so; we are trying to mobilise people all the time, but what if people come to think that mobilising for a cause has its downside and this nightmarish aspect which I just described… We don't know anymore where we stand-the Good, the Bad- Inside this..."

It does not come to Ménard that they, at RWB, have a greater responsibility than everybody else in going mainstream on torture because they are the ones who inform us about what is going on. Did you notice that at the end Ménard admits two shocking facts; not only we can endorse Torture in some cases but they, as reporters, should probably not inform the public about it. The case is closed.

Read here my two articles on Torture:

Are We Banalising Torture ?

Torture and Terror: Bush's and Bin Laden's Victories, Everybody Else's Defeat

Read Juan Cole: Gonzalez gone for the wrong reasons

Are we banalising torture ?

Before the present talk about torture in our societies, torture existed. There were some 'rogue states' and regimes torturing their political prisoners to extract information or to break their will. People and media and leaders in the 'free world' used to protest loud and regularly about torture, sometimes exert sanctions against nations practising torture.

This is how institutional torture was perceived after the signing of the UN convention against torture in 1987, it was seen as a shame, a moral stain tarnishing and sullying nations and citizens.

Since the 'free world', the world that 'does not torture' neither 'condone torture', started his 'war on terror', torture talk changed. First it was a murmur. Then a multitude of facts started to make the murmur louder and louder. We, citizens of the 'free world' , learned that our governments are making transactions with states who torture. We also learned, that in 'remote' prisons, in 'remote' countries, hidden from the eyes of international organisations who used to watch and to report to us about torture in the 'other world', torutre was actually taking place and performed by people who belonged to us. We also realised that our governments were talking openly about torture, not trying to understand it and to eradicate it but to redefine it. We realised that high profile experts in the legal, medical and scientific spheres, were working day and night trying to provide expertise to our governments on how to make torture more efficient, more scientific, more knowledgeable, more invisible, going as far as to defend it in certain circumstances, to convince us that this is an evil we couldn't escape, for the sake of 'our freedoms'. So the open talk on torture is becoming all about its justification in our 'free world'.

Our governments continue to torture. And with the debate about its justification, it is no more secretive, shameful, brutal and forbidden. It is around us, it is between us, it is with us, it is intractable. It is something we are starting to talk about, like other things, organise an action day so we may feel good about it, like action day against mental illness or action day against tobacco or earth action day or mother's day or car free day and so on...

In this spirit and with the idea that torture is here to stay with us, bloggers and Human rights organisations are launching a 'Torture Awareness Month'*. I was asked to join, I find the idea awkward for all the reasons I listed above. I refused, then I accepted and now I really feel unconfortable with the whole idea.

*I agree with the bloggers initiative and I don't think that the initiative in itself is banalising torture but it is the result of the banalisation of torture by our 'democratic' and 'free' regimes. Should we accept this banalisation ? How should we act as to repel forcefully this banalisation ? I don't have right now the correct answer and this is why I joined the intitiative.