14 May, 2014

Six Questions for Tara McKelvey on Torture | The American Conservative

Six Questions for Tara McKelvey on Torture | The American Conservative: 6) One doesn’t exactly get the sense that the United States has fully grappled with its own panicked overreach in the aftermath of 9/11. (This moment from a recent Sarah Palin speech comes to mind, as does the almost perfunctory display of torture in popular television shows like “Scandal.”) Is it possible that the next president could “reinstate” torture?

Of course. When I give talks about interrogations and torture, people always ask me why I have a problem with it. I understand–I was all for torture right after 9/11. I would have tortured the hijackers myself if they were still alive, and if I had been able to find them. I wasn’t thinking very rationally. Then I started learning about terrorism and I met the people who had been tortured, and I realized how wrong I was–and na�ve. Believing in torture means you aren’t looking at the facts on the ground–you are just believing in some kind of fantasy about how to fix the world.