Speaking in response to the terrorist attack in Brussels on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested this horror could have been prevented if only we’d tortured more people.
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The chief problem with this line of reasoning is that it simply isn’t true.
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Indeed, as former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld put it, “the history of the military is clear: Torture doesn’t work. The military knows that.” He made that comment in 2005, but what we’ve learned since only confirms his assessment.
This is the case for a number of reasons: Torture undermines effective, nonviolent interrogation skills. It has agents chasing unreliable leads based on bad information, wasting valuable time.
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As one researcher, Darius Rejali, concluded in what is considered to be “the benchmark work on torture,” “For harvesting information, torture is the clumsiest method available to organizations, even clumsier in some cases than flipping coins or shooting randomly into crowds.”
“The sources of error are systematic and ineradicable,” Rejali concluded.
Even the CIA even admitted that its waterboarding and other truly gruesome torture techniques never successfully stopped any imminent terrorist attacks.
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And beyond questions of effectiveness, torture is also wrong and un-American. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s George Washington on the subject in his charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, September 14, 1775:
Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] … I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause … for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.
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More:
http://rare.us/story/no-donald-trump-more-torture-would-not-have-prevented-the-tragedy-in-brussels/
