I find it interesting that some of the same tactics of humiliation and torture are used in this country today for so-called war criminals that are in concentration camps as were used in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. But one could argue that they are not the same. To say that they are the same is to insult the scientific advances in psychology and sociology and not to mention the American identity and pride. No, today they use the same tactics but they are far more complex and elegant, taking so called humanity into account. Torture techniques of today are designed with much more thought and reflection, with the most advanced and cutting edge research findings being employed in their development.

Yet, I also find it appalling that humiliation and torture as such is still a practice today, especially in light of what is known about the Holocaust, but more generally, what we think of as 'humane'. And while some may argue that we have refined the torture techniques down to a psychological science, this not only does little to assuage the sense of disgust that arises in my throat, but actually increases the appalling nature of what is taking place. Here what we have is science without regulation from moral value. The death machine, far from being dismantled as a practice, instead is made even more precise in the methodical way it picks apart the minds of its victims. The moral argument is supposed to be that, unlike the innocent victims of the Holocaust, these people are prisoners of war, traitors, terrorists, those who bombed and were responsible for, in some way, perpetrating the deaths of other innocent lives, etc., etc. I have to wonder, however, what Hitler’s rationale was to enlist the aid of his country to justify the torture, humiliation, and ultimately, extermination of over 6 billion individuals. I suppose if the words sound reasonable enough, anything can be made to look just, moral, ethical, etc., etc. Let’s make them walk around naked; let’s make them wear hoods and pose in the nude while guards poke fun at their anatomy and take pictures. Of course, no one supposedly gave the guards orders to engage in such activity. But if it wasn’t for them getting caught, no one would also be the wiser. The question is why punish these guards for what the system allows for? After all, we’re supposed to be the scientifically advanced society which has designed this neo-torture device using the latest and greatest in psychological research. We can reasonably guess with statistical and psychological precision that prison guards will fall to human depravity sooner or later simply because that is what the studies show will happen to most people under the kinds of situation in which the guards find themselves. But what? Don’t we use statistics anymore? Does the ‘jail psychology experiment’ not count for anything? Doesn’t what happened at Auschwits and other concentration camps not matter when tallying up the psychological behaviors that occur in guards and prisoners in similar settings such as those found at Guantanamo Bay?

One might say that the analogy and examples I use here are strained ones, and the conditions which are described to the public are not 'that bad'. For example, I recall in one interview that Rumsfeld ridiculed the idea that certain critiques were being advanced regarding prisoners who were made to stand for thirty minutes. He said, ‘heck, I have to stand for thirty minutes or more everyday’ or something to that effect. But I wonder if he’s forced to stand for thirty minutes everyday with an orange hood covering his head and his hands tied behind his back in shackles, sometimes with guards shouting who knows what kind of obscenities at him, in a place he prays to silent gods that he could be taken from.

Still, I suppose in one respect we are more humane than any other barbaric predecesors that used humiliation and torture techniques on their prisoners. But if so, I think its necessary, then, to rethink what is meant by 'humane'. I think it would have to be one which torture constitutes its definition in some way. I wonder how close this comes to confusion, the kind that espouses a degredation of value and community understanding, the kind of thing that ultimately consumed great empires like Rome.