Prisoner torture - not an aberration but what we've become

originally posted on 5/13/2004

As you may have noticed, No Force, No Fraud is about opposing the use of force as a means to achieve results of any kind. I've approached that from many angles, attempting to demonstrate that force will always create more bad results than good. That IS the important lesson that libertarianism has for all of us... that force, OF ANY KIND, will result in increased force, escalating force, retaliatory force, and truly ugly forms of force.

The U.S. acceptance of force as a tool of effecting change has led us into a morass of almost unthinkable depravity now... the use of torture, physical, psychological, and even sexual torture, as a means of achieving results. While we all protest such actions, there is one segment of America who will protest the loudest and righteously proclaim themselves as "above the morass"... the American do-gooders. By "do-gooders", I mean those who believe that government programs can improve our society... who believe that legislation is the appropriate way to effect change... and who are continually pushing for larger and more powerful government.

Since the current administration is viewed as conservative, conservative do-gooders are going to justifiably be blamed for most of the results of this war, while liberal do-gooders are going to be self-righteously patting themselves on the back as not to blame for all that is going wrong, and certainly not for the torture of Iraqis by Americans.

I have warned repeatedly, as have many other libertarians, that force leads to destructive results... that when you use force for what you view as grand ends, you must accept that you are putting power into the hands of those who have ends you DON'T accept. By seeking government intervention and control to achieve the results you think are right, you arm government to do any damned thing it chooses.

Do-gooders, in your arrogant elitist belief that you are capable and trustworthy of defining, for all of us, what is worthwhile, and in then granting the use of force in furthering those desired ends, you have played a major role in the disasters we're now faced with. With your incessant demands for legislative action to force the rest of us to "do what is right", you've caused the continual growth of centralized government, and given your blessings to the use of force. You may not now back away and believe you have no responsibility for the unintended consequences.

The glorification of achieving results through force, no matter how benign it may seem when applied by a do-gooder to a specific aim, has the same root fallacy as achieving results through torture and abuse. That fallacy is that initiated force ever works to achieve good results. It does not, and until we all understand that fully, good intentions will continue to have unthinkable results. Just a very few examples:

• Do-gooders have, in the name of protecting the children, FORCED many into horrendous misery emanating from massive bureaucracies that treat families, and their children, as insignificant pawns to be tossed around like so much statistical fodder.
  
  
• Do-gooders have, in the name of urban renewal and progress, FORCED millions of our poor to give up their homes and businesses.
  
  
• Do-gooders have, in the name of better, safer, and therefore more expensive housing, FORCED more Americans completely out of the housing market and into choosing between welfare and homelessness.
  
  
• Do-gooders have, in the name of "working wages", FORCED the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs that could keep the very poor from being jobless and from having an opportunity to learn skills and qualify for better work.
  
  
• Do-gooders have, in the name of improving schools, FORCED the elderly, with no children in school, and with fixed incomes, to pay increased property taxes that often result in the loss of their homes.
  
  
• Do-gooders have, in the name of promoting democracy around the world, FORCED all of us to fund the horrendous Iraqi destruction, and many other evils.

While do-gooders like to view such programs as benefits for our society, they deliberately wear blinders and make excuses for the real results. They applaud the few successes, with great, pompous, self-congratulatory celebrations, in order to blind themselves to the many others who suffered unnecessarily. When pressed, they take the escape of the "greater good" and delude themselves that even those "broken eggs to make the omelet" can be rescued if only we spend more money and use yet more FORCE.

We've known for a long time that our Guantanamo prison was probably much like what we now can no longer ignore at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi facilities. We've known that torture and abuse exist in our own civilian prisons. What is the difference? That we can no longer turn our heads and deny? That we can now see it rather than picture it in our minds? Or, is it that it was acceptable until we got caught?

There is no doubt that our leaders knew and sanctioned such torture and abuse, and didn't respond to humanitarian reports of it occurring. It wasn't news to them. Despite their use now of "plausible deniability", blaming it on a "few bad apples", and then blaming it on a few civilian contractors, and now blaming it on the military, there must be no escaping that the responsibility goes all the way up to the Presidency and to the Congress that approved and urged him on.

Aside from specific responsibility for these actions, though, Americans as a people should view this shameful extreme as reaping the crop we've willingly sown. Look around. We are a nation with over 2 million of our own citizens in prison. We are a nation with more military strength than the rest of the world combined. We are a nation with military presence in over a hundred foreign nations. We are a nation whose leaders have interfered in the affairs of virtually every other nation. We are a nation who has supported cruelty of this sort in many other places, shipping prisoners to places more able and willing to use gross measures of torture. We are a nation who has willingly crushed millions of our own people through oppressive taxes, laws, and regulation.

This is a systemic failure, not just of the narrowly defined Iraqi military, or the military in general, or of the current administration, but of our system of government. It is an out-of-control system epitomized even by our election system... winning at all cost, regardless of results, regardless of corruption, regardless of hypocrisy, and regardless of the damage caused. When are Americans going to wise up and recognize that most politicians are seeking power and glory, and that when you eagerly give it to them, they are bound to wreak havoc in your name?

We do NOT have to elect greedy power-mongers to office. We do NOT have to blindly accept lies and pretend that our party's lies are better than the other party's lies. There is one, and only one, set of candidates who will tell you the uncomfortable, unpleasant truth... that government is NOT the solution to problems, it IS the problem.

We have, through the neglect of many, and the do-good pushing of others, become a grotesque fascist/socialist nation relying on the use of force. It should not surprise us that we have results usually associated with facist/socialist collectivist states.

We are not an evil people, but the government we elect to represent us damned sure is evil, and corrupt, and that government has been smearing the reputation of Americans for many decades. For perhaps the first time in history, most of the world views us as the "bad guys". We have become what the German people were while Hitler was in power... protesting that the results are not our fault.

So, America... will you just continue with your home-improvement projects, and bigger SUV's, and celebrating holidays, taking vacations, planning for college, and getting fatter eating out? Will you continue busying yourselves while those we elected demolish our freedoms and make the world hate us? Is it possible that you might find a bit of spare time to reflect on this mess, or will you, like the Germans of 60 years ago, just wait until it is far too late and then make excuses about not realizing?