The fantastical movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, inspired by Jon Ronson’s non-fiction bestseller by the same title , arrived in theaters at a most auspicious time. The movie deals with the topic of torture, just as Guantanamo detainees await their transfer to stand trial in New York courts causing commentators to speculate on how the issue of torture will be dealt with during not only the criminal proceedings but also the public debate they inspire.
As with any dark comedy, The Men Who Stare at Goats not so subtly confronts us with the question of our morality, and how much cruel and degrading treatment we can stomach in good conscience.
The quirky tale unfolds when reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) encounters Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who claims to have participated in a U.S. Military experiment to develop the paranormal powers of a group of hand-picked soldiers. As Wilton accompanies Cassady on an incredulous journey through the arid deserts of Iraq sometime in 2003, he slowly pieces together the past and learns that Cassady took part in the “New Earth Army”, under the tutelage of Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), who gleaned his training manual from six years of hanging out in “new age” circles. The soldiers learn to exercise extra-sensory perceptions and telepathy to disarm their enemy, staying faithful to the principle that love and peace prove mightier weapons than hate and violence.
The movie offers a comical view of how straight laced soldiers “find themselves” on the path to becoming “warrior monks”, but soon encounter their nemesis in the form of Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) whose dark influence leads Cassady to use his powers to kill a goat with his naked stare. Disillusioned, Cassady quits the army. When Wilton encounters him years later, a beaten down Cassady still holds true to his belief in the supernatural and follows a vision to find the long lost Django.
I happened to see The Men Who Stare at Goats a day after hearing a talk on the topic of torture by Professor Alfred McCoy during the all-day conference: “After the Violence: Crimes, Prosecutions and Then What?”, convened by the University of Wisconsin/Madison Law School. Ever so predictably, I could not help but ponder over the classic question of “is it art or reality”? Yet the juxtaposition of the two events brought to fore that the conversation about torture no longer belongs only to academics, but has now become a part of American popular culture. As a society, we are in the process of grappling with the past, and The Men Who Stare at Goats confronts us with some difficult questions.
To begin, how do we make sense of the revelation that torture was regularly used during the Bush Administration’s war on terror? Does it mean that torture is just something humans have always done and always will do? Or is it a human aberration that most humans repel against? Does the answer to these questions dictate the correct response?: Turn the page and forget? Or hold the aberrant to account?
McCoy’s own research suggests that the use of torture was not an aberration in U.S. policy, but rather a planned feature. He meticulously detailed for us, as he has already done in books and articles , how the C.I.A. has spent billions of dollars since the Cold War perfecting methods of torture in a deliberate and systematic fashion, and it even exported these techniques to allies around the world such as through its School of Americas’ training programs. In Larry Hooper fashion, the C.I.A. apparently experimented with electroshock, hypnosis, psychosurgery, and drugs (including LSD) on unsuspecting soldiers and civilians. Yet eventually, the intelligence agency discovered that sensory disorientation (e.g. hooding, sleep manipulation, loud and bright stimulus, isolation) and “self-inflicted pain” (e.g. enforced standing for many hours) more effectively broke down prisoners. McCoy describes how the use of these “hands-off” psychological attacks on personal and cultural identity, makes a person vulnerable to mind-control techniques. It seems “no touch torture” ranks up there with “a little dunk in the water”, the infamous reference to water boarding made by Dick Cheney .
McCoy’s detailed study of many of the thousands of photos of torture leaked in May 2009 corroborate the idea that torture was systematic and not just some sick and random game done by some deranged soldiers. Yet, I noticed that people seemed almost apathetic to Obama’s attempt to block the release of these photos .I was reminded of the cynicism of Latin Americans who seem so accustomed to corruption and abuse that they no longer react to new scandal. Strangely, I felt a twisted nostalgia for the time when many Americans truly believed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2004 when he dismissed the 2004 Abu Ghraib pictures as excesses done by “by a small number of U.S. military”, or as termed by New York Times columnist William Safire– a few “creeps”.
I will never forget how my own grandmother clung tightly to her faith in our leaders, and seemed incredulous of my own research on how the School of Americas trained the very same Latin American military leaders who used brutality in their own dirty wars. As frustrating as it was not to be believed, it nevertheless broke my heart to see her so disillusioned soon after the Torture Memos were leaked in 2004. She served as my barometer of the American public’s coming to terms with our dysfunction, our imperfection, and in many ways our lost innocence. My experience in other parts of the world has revealed to me our nation’s incredibly unique belief in the good of our democratic system. In this way, my grandmother –like so many Americans—reflect the idealism of Cassady.
Certainly, The Men Who Stare at Goats involves the classic struggle between good and evil by portraying how a well intentioned experiment went bad. Hooper eventually becomes a private contractor for the U.S. military, using the information of the peaceful “warrior monks” to develop sadistic approaches to breaking down the enemy, including sensory deprivation and stimulus on detainees in Guantanamo-like orange prison garb.
While the movie raises moral issues about torture, it does not address whether such interrogation tactics actually work—‘work’, that is, for eliciting valuable military intelligence to staved off future attacks. Interestingly, the movie seems to assume that the revelation of cruelty inflicted by Hooper will suffice to make the audience despise him and his mission. Yet, here is where fiction departs from reality.
Revelations of systematic torture of Guantanamo detainees has not seemed to provoke universal outrage. In fact, once the Bush administration and its supporters could no longer deny the institutionalized use of torture during the ‘war on terrorism’, the nation did not unanimously condemn this practice as immoral, nor did they universally embrace that torture is prohibited by national and international law. Instead, the debate turned to whether the means justified the end. Proponents of “enhanced interrogation” (an euphemism that strips the act of its brutality) argue that as long as it produces useful intelligence, torture is okay and we need not lose sleep. The slippery slope of this assertion gives me bags under my eyes. What else will we tolerate that is more “efficient”, even if morally reprehensible and technically illegal?
But alas, the question is now: Does torture work? Professor McCoy’s own research found little specific factual evidence to prove the “ticking time bomb” rationale for torture (http://www.progressive.org/mag_mccoy1006). Interestingly, the “ticking bomb scenario” is itself an academic concept first made popular in 1970 by philosopher Michael Walzer who recognized the moral paradox of political leaders doing “wrong” for a right cause (and who should thus assume responsibility for their choices). Yet, philosophical ruminations aside, there has been little hard evidence that torture actually has prevented ticking bombs from exploding and saving thousands of lives. Instead, the sorted stories of new acts of terrorism being prevented indicate that other types of intelligence work, such as evidence from computer hard drives or the tracing of phone conversations, provided the critical information for averting disaster.
Torture victims themselves can tell you that torture does not work. Last year (October 2008), Argentine Patricia Isasa came to speak to my class to discuss her own experience of being tortured when 16 years old and detained on suspicion of terrorism. She has dedicated the last thirty years to seeking justice (and has seen many of the School of Americas trained soldiers who tortured her go to prison) as well as to educating the world that torture simply does not work.
She logically explained to us that if a person truly is a part of any type of organized criminal enterprise, the information they hold about a ticking bomb will be immediately rendered useless once their cohorts learn of their capture and change their plans. It is only those who have no such affiliation that will make false confessions and fabricate information to desperately try to escape near death experiences.
Yet, acting on this false information does not always have a negligible effect. Consider for example the impact of Ibn al-Shaykh al–Libi’s claim that linked the Saddam Hussein government with al Qaeda operatives. Bush relied on this confession in October 2002 to convince Congress to authorize military action against Iraq, and Colin Powell did the same in February 2003 to make the case for war to the United Nations. Al-Libi later revealed that he had made this false claim under the duress of torture. Yet, seven years later, hundreds of thousands of lives later (Iraqi civilians and American service men and women) and no end to the original global threat of terrorism, we should ask ourselves if torture really works.
Then again, the fact that some Guantanamo detainees had to be waterboarded up to 183 times should beg the question whether torture really is the most efficient way to get information quickly enough to stop the bomb from ticking.
Alternatively, Professor McCoy documents how the “emphathetic interrogation” used by the FBI since 1940 has resulted in far more valuable intelligence information that kept us safer (especially since this approach also avoids creating thousands if not millions of new enemies around the world who hate us only because we condone torture).
So if the “ticking time bomb” justification for torture doesn’t match up with experience, why do governments resort to it? McCoy suggests a few reasons.
For one, he views the human need to grasp for security in the time of crisis: “In sum, the powerful often turn to torture in times of crisis, not because it works but because it salves their fears and insecurities with the psychic balm of empowerment.” Our most deeply seated need to feel safe can create such intense fear that humans will condone almost anything if it makes them think it will bring them security.
Yet, McCoy suggests an even more irrational and darker reason for torture: it has a “darkly erotic” seductive appeal. McCoy says that not only the foot soldiers who inflict the pain are enticed by this wicked vice, but even the leaders far from the battle who, upon vivid imaginings of these techniques, approve their use.
I found this view incredibly hard to digest, and adamantly resisted the idea that a principled person could succumb to the evil of inflicting harm on another. Yet, Cassady epitomized this human frailty when he kills a goat with his stare. In the movie, he explains to Wilton that when ordered to undertake this assignment, he set out determined to resist it. But then, all at once, he was overcome by the desire to see if he could in fact kill with his stare. His encounter with his dark side ultimately defeated him. It killed a defenseless creature and brought sorrow to his own soul. And so, in the end, the movie is about Cassady’s seeking redemption. While I cannot tell you how he does this (lest give away the whole plot) I can suggest that fiction presents yet another troubling human theme. If we do not condemn the dark side, even when it is too late to prevent the damage, then we may in fact still be succumbing to its seductive appeal.
Here, McCoy explains why we, in whose name torture is performed, should oppose it: “There’s an absolute ban on torture for a very good reason. Torture taps into the deepest recesses, unexplored recesses of human consciousness, where creation and destruction coexist, where the infinite human capacity for kindness and infinite human capacity for cruelty coexist, and it has a powerful perverse appeal, and once it starts, both the perpetrators and the powerful who order them, let it spread, and it spreads out of control.”
An implicit assumption of McCoy’s recommendation is that we actually have a choice when we face the option to give in –or not– to the “seductive appeal” of the dark side. Thus, as reflected in Cassady’s struggle, the ultimate issue comes down to choosing between good and evil. Movies, of course, help to simplify this classic human dilemma. Yet, in light of contemporary events surrounding the issue of torture, The Men Who Stare at Goats uses fiction and metaphor to confront us with what might be one of the most pressing questions of our time: As a society, are we Cassady or are we Hooper?