The ancient Greeks were different from other peoples of their time, and what’s more they knew they were different. They had a word to describe the difference: the others were barbarians. The English word “barbarians,” as Prof. H.D.F. Kitto explains in his book The Greeks, does not do justice to the Greek word, which literally translated means  the unthinking.  But one of the characteristics the Greeks realized set them apart, and above, barbarians does correspond to our notion of the word. Unlike the barbarians, the Greeks did not rule by torture.

For that and like qualities Ancient Greece is known as the cradle of Western Civilization. Fellows of the Ayn Rand Institute write essays praising that civilization. And then give it up with breathtaking easiness. Say the magic word “war” and government torture is no longer evil, it is a tool among other tools.

The story of official U.S. torture – of America imitating the barbarians of the East – in our time and in our name is so bizarre and disgusting most people cannot take it in. It can’t be happening, it’s out of this universe, out of mind. The story has disappeared from the news headlines but the reports are preserved on our  Links  page.

Torture means taking extra effort to inflict pain on someone already under control. A very simple idea, there is nothing hazy about it. The torturer’s purpose might be:  to obtain a confession – an absurdly meaningless confession;  to obtain information – usually false, and always totally unreliable unless independently verified by other, objective, means;  to punish a person and/or instill fear in a group to which he belongs – though that fear will come with righteous hate;  or simply to do it for itself, like eating candy.

Torture has one further use. Since torture brutalizes the torturer, men can be further dehumanized, made still more mindless and obedient, by requiring them to engage in it. And torture has the same effect on those who look on – or know of it – without protest.

We are referring to state managed torture: government men point to a man and label him to be tortured; other government men proceed to torture him, until – no objective stopping point being possible – he tells them what they want to hear – sensible or not – or until they get tired, or the lunch bell rings. A few years later the torturers return to civilian life and get work as policemen.

ARI is of two minds about the U.S. torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the torture of prisoners “rendered” by the U.S. for the purpose to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Singapore, Thailand, and Pakistan. People at ARI deny that this torture exists, and make self-righteous noises against anyone who says it does. And they say the U.S. ought to torture, in order to help wage the War on Terrorism. I do not explain the contradiction, merely point it out.

ARI insinuates that torturing Arabs is all right because Arabs do it, as if the Middle East had become our standard of decency.

U.S. torture of Arabs is widespread, and was planned by the Bush administration before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Fortunately not everyone in the government and military approves of this torture. We now have the spectacle of one branch of the government investigating the actions of another, or dissenters within one branch fighting their superiors. (So far all the government investigations have been a whitewash.) There are now over a hundred known cases of men tortured to death – by beating their brains in, suffocating them, and general trauma. If the reader is not familiar with these events he can read the following news articles; our discussion of ARI continues afterward: