The term “Suspect”

I was perusing blogs on here the other day and I came across one of the many posts regarding the so-called torture bill that was just signed into law by our dear president recently. It was echoing the same sentiments that are being thrown back and forth by everyone else in the world it seems. On the one side you have the pro-torture folks who feel that the Geneva conventions is out dated and that torture is what is needed in order to get terrorist suspects to talk. On the other side you have the anti-torture folks who feel that if we open that door then we are not any better than the terrorists we are trying to defeat. It is the same rhetoric, back and forth, all around the world.

I admit I don’t know what the answer is. I can see both sides of the argument and I am scared for our future. I suppose I would have to say, if I have to choose a side, that I am against torture in any form. But my reasons are rather different from most of those that I read out there.

First off, I have noticed a stark shortage of the term “suspect” in the vast majority of writings I have read. My biggest fear is that we are simply creating more terrorists with it. Here is a scenario that better illustrates my point.

You are an Arab. You have worked hard your whole life to support your family and live a decent quiet life. You have never been one to do anything to rock the boat, and simply want to live your life in peace.

Then one night your door gets kicked in by the Americans. You are beaten, arrested and taken away to an undisclosed location. Your family is not told anything. You are not told anything. You simply disappear.

For the next year you are kept locked up. You have nightly unannounced visits from your captors where you are tortured, beaten, and asked questions about things which you know nothing. You are never told why you are being held. You are never told whether or not you will ever be released. All you have is the beatings and the questions.

Finally, after several months of this, you are released. You are driven back to your neighborhood and thrown from the car onto the street. Your family has long since left because they figured you for dead. Your home has been taken because you were unable to pay for it or take care of it. You have nothing but the nightmares and the pain. Not so much as an apology comes from your captors and you never did figure out what you were taken for.

How would you feel about Americans?

Now I am not suggesting sympathy for terrorists. I am very pro-torture on people that we have proven are terrorists or know are affiliated with terrorists. But if we don’t know for a fact of their affiliation, which is what a fair trial is for, then what good are we accomplishing from torture?

I have no idea how many people there may be out there who are a direct result of this type of thing, but I can’t help but think there are a lot. All we are going to accomplish by making torture legal is to make more enemies.