on what we should have learned from A Few Good Men (and what it says about torture)
"I want the truth!"
"You can't HANDLE the truth!"
If there's a more iconic scene among films produced in the 1990's I can't think of it. Now, replace the shiny-haired, eyes-steeled-with purpose Tom Cruise with the taller, moustached Eric Holder. On the witness stand, instead of Jack Nicholson as the decorated colonel Jessup see the spectacled scowl of Dick Cheney.
The debate is virtually the same. Cheney screams "You want me on that wall! you need me on that wall!"
Attorney General Holder says "I want to know what happened...did you order the code red?"
And Cheney, while not officially copping to it at first, does nothing but defend the actions of himself and others as necessary and legitimate--the kind of things that "save lives". And despite a certain terrifying gleam in his eye, for a second, you have to wonder if he could be right. That's when you try to nail him down and that's when he says "You bet I did."
This is what torture does to us. Many have talked about what it does to it's victims, and we are right to consider it in that light--we should be concerned about how we treat others first, and ourselves last. But years of American individualism have rendered the collective American psyche an "US-first" mentality that seems incapable of moving beyond self to neighbor, so I'll try and make the argument that way.
Planes crashed and towers fell. Lives were lost--thousands of them. And, despite all my peace-loving ways, one of my first thoughts as I stared slack-jawed at the TV that September morning was "Who would do this? They should have thought it through some more--I don't think I'd mess with the largest military on Earth and a President who used to govern a state that executes more prisoners per year than most other states combined."
Yes, I'm embarrassed to admit that when collectively punched my first thought was how hard back we would hit. I'm not proud of it--but I'm prepared to say it was my first though because it is my most basic, human, gut-level reaction.
I distinctly remember thinking next about the Middle East--about how laughable all this would seem to them--that here was America covering one horrific attack when their news reports were full of daily attacks. We had always thought ourselves immune. At that point I started wondering what principles were under attack--capitalism and excess, corporate greed--maybe even the more noble ideals of genuine democracy and individual freedom.
A lot has happened in eight years, but our individual reactions to the attacks of September 11th still provide the primary lens through which we understand the torture issue.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been villianized as representative of our most basic reaction--to hit back, strike harder, faster, and with more force than we were hit--and if possible, make it a knock-out. It may be our first reaction, but that does not mean it is our best reaction.
Torture crosses all sorts of lines. If a ten-year-old did to an animal what CIA operatives have done to terror suspects we would call a therapist and have him examined for psychopathic tendencies. The fact that individuals not only carried on these kinds of interrogations, but that in many cases they were instructed to do so raises the stakes even higher. This is not the capricious acts of one, but evidence of a systemic influence--that on some level, in between the perceived need for protection--for wanting someone on that wall--we didn't stop to think what kind of people we were hiring to patrol it.
Like the film (and the Broadway play before it), A Few Good Men does what all good art does--it hold a mirror up to society and to the beholder. It forces us to align ourselves with the truth-hungry attorney and the rabid-yet-convicted C.O. We have to choose which voice we will listen to as our basic survival senses struggle against our nobler efforts at reason and diplomacy.
The "torture issue" raises the same moral challenge--do we stay at the fight-or-flight response, or can we see through the false dilemma to a better vision of humanity--the kind of higher level thinking that we always said separated us from the rest of the created world.
Perhaps now is the time to resolve ourselves to what we will not--what we cannot--what we must not--do, lest we be forced to rely once again on our most basic reaction.
