back to torture

"It is essential that justice be done and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different"

I think by now I can appreciate that the desire for revenge is very strong and runs deep in the psyche of human beings. We desire some form of reciprocity in our relations with others and when those others attack us, harm us, or harm others who we care for deeply, there is a great deal of pain. We then often may wish to inflict that pain back. I do recognize that something like September 11th is a massive wound on the national psyche. I do recognize that it makes people justifiably angry and afraid when thousands of their friends, their citizens, and their loved ones are murdered. I had some unusual reactions myself that day. I think this was, in effect, one of the first times I actually noticed that I was truly a little different from most people in my manner of thinking. Sometimes this was true in a negative way and it is indeed possible that my reactions on that day were negative, relative to being afraid or angry instead (neither of which is an emotion I recall experiencing, maybe confusion while I tried to work my head around the jumbles and bits and pieces, but that's about it). But I also galvanized myself toward others in the same way that other people around the country did for a few weeks. It was that feeling, the sort of assumed charity and decency, that was impressive and stuck with me from those days.

So I guess it should not surprise me that my reaction was not one of revenge either. I regard the need to satisfy justice as a quest within the rule of law and it offends me to deviate from that path in part because those rules and the ideals they often represent are very carefully and painfully won over centuries of human history. Tossing them aside to get at our enemies is emotionally satisfying perhaps for those who thirsted for blood, but it's not leaving us very many outs. If there's one thing I like morally speaking, it's having outs. Revenge does not have outs. It's a binary quest to inflict pain and suffering upon someone who did it to you (or not to). Justice leaves us with many possibilities. There are therefore many ways to satisfy it. Including attacking hostile state and non-state actors with military force in order to compel their acquiescence to justice, should that be deemed an effective strategy (it is rarely very effective in practice).

I am of the opinion that the things we do to inflict pain should be left to only when it is absolutely necessary (such as to defend ourselves from death or serious injury). Revenge, as satisfying as it may feel in its moment where we might tremble in its glorious effect, is hardly necessary because it is fleeting. It establishes nothing and achieves, ultimately, only hollow accomplishments. Killing terrorists, in accordance with our state's laws through the use of a military force on the field of battle or through the application of criminal justice to have them executed, may be productive or counterproductive in the event of preventing future attacks. That is a matter worthy of some debate. Killing and injuring terrorist suspects, captured and detained well away from the field of battle and rendered incapable of harming Americans or anyone else, even assuming that they held such desires, is hardly a productive enterprise. It is solely a practice of revenge seeking because it allows to express those darker impulses violently and explosively against a helpless and defeated foe.
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Guess who wins that battle? It's not the person who resorts to torture.