The banality of torture and how it undermines American security

Alberto Gonzales once wrote an infamous memo arguing that torture was legal. More than that, he argued that torture was necessary and the rule of law obsolete. The man is now the chief law enforcement [sic] office of this country

So i was interested to read a piece in the NPR News blog on the banality of torture.

It's eerily similar to a comment made by Gen. Jacques Massu, the commander of French forces during the brutal Battle of Algiers.

"Torture was part of a certain ambiance," he said in 2000. "We could've done things differently."

Far from helping the cause, torture undermined France's fight against Algerian nationalism by galvanizing the undecided against the torturers and revolting France's allies. Torture is having exactly the same effect in undermining America's fight against Islamist radicalism, a cause where the support of allies is even more critical.

When the most powerful nation on Earth, one that spends almost as much on so-called national defense as the rest of the world combined, claims that it will perish if it doesn't torture people or if it actually respects international law, then it can't expect the benefit of the doubt from anyone. Regardless of its sanctified national myth.

Thanks to the Bush administration's crusade against American values, America's integrity is probably at an all-time low. It's a sad fate for a country once seen as the moral leader of the free world by the peoples of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe.