Mark Phillips: The American Question

3/10/02: "Socialism or barbarism".

One hundred years ago the old Socialist movement had a terse and eloquent slogan summarizing the alternatives facing humanity: socialism or barbarism. They were right, and, they lost.

Our society today is the barbarism they pessimistically yet accurately foresaw.

Under C.I.A. direction, terrorist "suspects" are being tortured by the intelligence services of friendly third countries. As today's Washington Post noted, "The suspects have been taken to countries, including Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence services have close ties to the CIA and where they can be subjected to interrogation tactics -- including torture and threats to families -- that are illegal in the United States, the sources said. In some cases, U.S. intelligence agents remain closely involved in the interrogation, the sources said."

Internet bulletin boards post-9/11 have erupted with calls from outraged Americans demanding that recalcitrant suspects be tortured. Despite the world's accumulated experience that torture is unreliable as a means of gathering accurate information, and the founding principles for which America stands.

Torture is small-potatoes barbarism, of course. In the century since the decline of the old Socialist movement, the world has known colonial genocide; World War I; Fascism; concentration camps; World War II; the Nazi holocaust; the incinerations of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Stalinist gulag; neo-colonial genocide in Vietnam; the Maoist Cultural Revolution; neo-Stalinist genocide in Kampuchea; neo-colonial slaughter in the Gulf, including the Death Highway outside Kuwait City. What's a little torture compared to that?

It's a betrayal. Of everything that makes us uniquely American.

C.I.A. operatives complicit in the torture of suspects should be tried and imprisoned. Foreign governments, including Egypt and Jordan, which torture their prisoners should be condemned and sanctioned.

Should be, but won't. "Socialism or barbarism," predicted the old Socialists. They were right, and, they lost.

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