Reality TV is torture enough already

The Guardian, a British publication that is widely known in the world of me for being crap, reports that British Channel 4 will air a “Guantánamo Bay-style reality show that will examine the effects of mild torture on seven male volunteers.”

“The Guantánamo Guidebook will recreate some of the practices used at the US naval base where hundreds of so-called ‘enemy combatants’ have been held without trial or access to lawyers for nearly three years,” the article reads.

As far as I can tell the show will feature seven guys who endured “mild torture” such as sleep deprivation, the use of extreme temperatures and “mild” physical contact. They were also subject to periods of forced nudity and religious and sexual humiliation, according to the article.

The volunteers are expected to tell interrogators everything they know … which isn’t anything, but that’s apparently incidental. Maybe they’ll reveal their mother’s addresses or something.

“Presented by Jon Snow, Channel 4 says the programme is designed to examine the widespread use of torture and whether it can ever be justified in what the US and UK governments have called the wider war ‘against terror,’” the article said. (This publication is clearly unbiased).

It went on to explain that the U.S. says torture is necessary in the war on terror. This investigation, which will include three other torture-related shows, will determine if that’s true.

To make it more real, I think a producer should be killed by a roadside bomb every time a contestant refuses to talk. Why not? If the torturers have no lives at stake, it becomes exactly what they’re making it out to be – unnecessary, heartless cruelty.

I’m not saying what happened in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo was right. Certainly some of the tactics used were excessive. Certainly some of the Soldiers got a little too much pleasure out of it, as evidenced by the smiling pictures they snapped of each other.

But many of the prisoners are enemy combatants, many of them do have information that will be vital to saving U.S. (and UK and Iraqi) lives, and most of them are not going to volunteer the information if you deprive them of lunch.

These Iraqis know what real torture is. Saddam Hussein introduced them to that – the rape rooms, the children’s prisons, the mass graves, Uday’s pesky habit of feeding people to his lions – these things were torture.

I met a prisoner of war who said the Republican Guard tied his feet up and beat them with cables for days when he refused to fight. Other Iraqi soldiers fought because their families were being held captive in Baghdad.

Oh but wait. These things, for the most part, only happened to the commoners and non-Baathists. The higher-ups in Saddam’s regime, they got privilege. They had money and food. They had pride. Pride is the highest virtue to them.

So if pride is the one thing that means the most to these people, and we need them to give us vital intelligence, injuring their pride is entirely appropriate. Yes there should be constraints. But before we go around decrying the U.S. as tyrants, perhaps we should pull our heads out of our posteriors.

Every organization – military, religious or otherwise – has its bad apples. But most Soldiers are actually heroes, not animals. We need to stop looking for reasons to crucify our own countrymen and start focusing on finding solutions to problems.

If I had to choose between the pride of the prisoners and the lives of my fellow Soldiers would I support “mild torture?” You’re damn right I would.