On Torture

September 1, 2009
On Torture

How do they do it? People on the left are continuing to decry torture tactics used by the CIA to get information necessary to keep our country safe from attacks being planned by our enemies, who would like to destroy us. Let’s see, the CIA is accused of atrocities like pointing an electric drill at a prisoner, pretending they executed a prisoner in a different room, blowing cigar smoke in their face, threatening to hurt their family, and water boarding (which we also do to our own troops). Despite threatened harm, not a hair on their heads are touched. Prisoners are not physically hurt. Yet the left makes it sound like these prisoners are traumatized so much that they are permanently damaged.

I guess I could believe people on the left sincerely hold beliefs against torture and that their opposition is not a tool to use in their quest to delegitimize conservative leaders’ success in keeping our nation safe. The problem is when these same torture decriers also approve of Fidel Castro. “You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met.“ declared US Rep Diane Watson (Dem, CA). Other liberals who support Castro are Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner and Steven Spielberg.

I don’t know what Congresswoman Watson et al believe about torture but Fidel Castro has admitted that torture is necessary to “annihilate the enemy”. Unlike CIA torture, Fidel’s torture is physical, and leaves permanent damage to bodies and minds. Armando Valladeres somehow survived 22 years as a political prisoner in Cuba. His crime? Speaking out publicly against the communist revolution. His sentence? Years and years of prison where he and others were forced to live in the greatest heat and the dampest cold without clothes. They were regularly beaten, shot at and sometimes killed; they were thrown into punishment cells, including the dreaded ''drawer cells,'' specially constructed units that make South Vietnam's infamous tiger cages seem like homey quarters. Guards armed with thick twisted electric cables and truncheons beat him as he lay on the floor. The beating felt as if they were branding him with a red-hot branding iron. Then he experienced the most intense, unbearable, and brutal pain of his life. One of the guards had jumped with all his weight on his broken, throbbing leg.'' That treatment was typical. In the punishment cells, prisoners were kept in total darkness. Guards dumped buckets of urine and feces over the prisoners who warded off rats and roaches as they tried to sleep. Fungus grew on Mr. Valladares because he was not allowed to wash off the filth. Sleep was impossible. Guards constantly awoke the men with long poles to insure they got no rest. Illness and disease were a constant. Even at the end, when the authorities were approving his release, Mr. Valladares was held in solitary confinement in a barren room with fluorescent lights turned on 24 hours a day. By then he was partially paralyzed through malnutrition intensified by the lack of medical attention.

Armando Valladares is not alone. Thousands of political opponents to the Castro regime have been killed or imprisoned in extremely poor conditions without trial. If those imprisoned and killed had he not been opponents of Fidel Castro, the international left would have rushed vociferously to his support. Unfortunately for the tortured in Cuba, people on the left who loudly and proudly stand up against “torture” by the US are silent about real torture taking place with the consent of Castro. They even loudly and proudly count Fidel as their friend, someone to teach us how to live and make America a “people’s paradise”. Anti-torture advocates are just as silent when torture takes place against Christians around the world.

Friends on the left, please look at some of the inconsistencies of the positions your side takes. Hypocrisy is not found only in churches.

(Bibliography: “Surviving Castro’s Tortures” Ronald Radosh, New York Times, June 8, 1986; rottentomatoes.com; Capitalism Magazine, July 30, 2000; Cuba Verdad)