Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror

The Logic and Language of Torture

58 The Logic and Language of Torture Jonathan H. Marks The road from terror to torture is, alas, well traveled. Fueled by narrative constructs that evoke fear and anger, we embark on exercises in moral reconstruction and legal exceptionalism—rendering permissible (sometimes even mandating) what would otherwise be prohibited and making inevitable what would otherwise be inconceivable . Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed that "most people reason dramatically, not quantitatively" (qtd. in Myers 56). A century later behavioral economists told us that, most of all, we fear "dread risks"—uncontrollable low-probability, highconsequence events, such as mass terror attacks (Slovic 283). The vivid and devastating collapse of the twin towers provided evidence in support of both claims. It gave us a "terrorscopic" vision of the world in which we are constantly under threat from Islamic fundamentalism, rebranded "Islamofascism" (see Safire; Pollitt) There is no denying that al-Qaeda poses a real threat to the lives of US-Americans (among others). However, we fear calamitous acts of terrorism in the "homeland" more than we fear a plethora of chronic and pedestrian risks, although the latter have (to date) caused many more fatalities than domestic terrorism. At least 18,000 people under the age of 65 die prematurely every year in the United States for lack of health insurance (Institute of Medicine 5); more than 40,000 US-Americans die in road traffic accidents, the leading cause of death for those between three and thirty-three (Subramanian), and those unfortunate enough to be both uninsured and involved in a car accident have a 37% greater chance of dying than insured victims. We are, however , inured to these quotidian risks, despite the magnitude of the losses they cause, and we focus instead on our dread risks, both real and imagined. This is why, in the months following the attacks on 11 September 2001, many of us took to the roads to make long journeys instead of flying—a decision that now seems ill advised, given the resulting spike in road traffic fatalities (Gigerenzer). The impact of basic emotions, such as anger or fear, whether evoked by terrorism or other risks, is felt beyond the sphere of individual behavior (see Marks, "What Counts"; "The Power"). They undoubtedly shape our policy preferences—whether we are inside government (Tenet) or outside it. This was starkly revealed by a study The Logic and Language of Torture 59 conducted in the months after 9/11 (Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, and Fischhoff). Half the subjects in the study group were conditioned by audio-visual stimuli to feel anger ; the other half were primed to feel fear. The fear-conditioned group favored conciliatory and capacity-building responses, such as strengthening ties with Muslim countries and improving public health infrastructure. The anger-conditioned group, on the other hand, preferred poorly targeted or untargeted punitive responses, such as the mass deportation of foreigners without valid visas—a measure that, according to one recent estimate, would cost the United States around $230 billion over a five-year period (Goyle and Jaeger). As I have argued elsewhere, basic emotions such as fear and anger may multiply and become amplified across groups and populations (Marks, "What Counts" 574-78). Without doubt, this is a complex process, one mediated by social, political, and constitutional structures, as well as culture, history, and collective memory (or collective amnesia). But it may help explain the results of a survey conducted in 2004—after the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib were first published—in which almost one quarter of the US-American respondents agreed that it was "too restrictive" to say that governments should never use torture, but said that it would be unacceptable for a foreign government ever to use torture against an American detainee (Kull, Ramsay, Subias, Weber, and Lewis). More than half of respondents described as "convincing" the view that "given what we learned from the 9/11 attacks, we cannot afford to tie our hands by declaring off limits any method for getting information that could be useful in the war on terrorism" (Kull et al. 7). The survey respondents were clearly suffering from what Timor Kuran has termed "moral dissonance" (233), as they grappled with competing moral imperatives. Torture is bad, and must be stopped. Terrorism is bad, and must be stopped. But to stop terrorism, we need torture (provided, of course, that we are not the victims). Or so the reasoning goes. This type of analysis is not the sole province of survey respondents...