Torture and Democracy
I cannot recommend strongly enough Scott Horton's interview with Darius Rejali, an Iranian expatriate whose recently released book Torture and Democracy emphasizes uncomfortable truths that most Americans prefer not to face.
These include:
- Liberal democracies torture.
- Torture techniques always come home from wars "over there."
- Focusing just on waterboarding is a distraction.
- Two-track systems, in which one agency is allowed to torture and others are not, or in which it's allowable to torture some categories of people but not others, invariably spread the rot throughout the society:
...[T]orture just doesn’t hide in a vault in the CIA. It hides in all the dark pockets of society -- military barracks, schools, frat houses, our supermax prisons and immigration lockups.And much more. Read the whole interview, and then read the book.
Labels: torture
posted by Nell @ 2:54 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
once upon a time darius and i, with friends, chased crayfish in a spring-fed pool and discussed the merits of community and democracy in relation to keeping interrogation methods under control. there's something about redwoods that makes one want to discuss horrible things; i did it again today.
An intriguing image, hapa, thanks for that.
Was I correct in describing Darius as an expatriate? I haven't looked up his background, and realized that he could well have been born here.
i didn't know until you asked but it looks somewhat complicated. iranian-bornwith american and iranian grandparents.
I've been agreeing with this argument forever. I've even been saying that I'm grateful to be having the torture debate since we're always loved torture and at least now we're dragging it partway into the sunshine.
Update: Leafing through my alumni magazine tonight, I find that Darius Rejali graduated seven years after me.
His Torture and Democracy is included in the magazine's regular feature of books by graduates.
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