I watched Unthinkable this afternoon. Good movie. Well made. (For those of you who want to know, I should say it contains a fair amount of language and violence, and the torture scenes are definitely not for the faint of heart.)
But, it is really impossible to stop there.
I was browsing through the Netflix Instant collection recommended for me and I noticed this item. Passed it by a couple times. But, when I was getting desperate for something to watch, I took a deeper look at it. After reading the short description on Netflix's site and seeing only high-rated reviews, I decided it might actually be well worth the watch. It was, but I didn't know that until I had gotten at least half-way through it.
The premise, which every reviewer repeats and concentrates on is this (and I'll try not to put in any spoilers, but I can't guarantee I won't give away some things you would like to discover yourself):
If America was faced with a monstrous threat and we had the pending-perpetrator in custody, could we--could officials, security forces, interrogation officers and military personnel--do whatever was required to get the information necessary to dismantle this threat?
If many thousands or even millions of lives hung in the balance, what are our limits?
I am not going to answer that question. The movie doesn't even definitively do that. But, the issue is one worth pondering.
I can only seem to figure out how I should act in such a situation, and not even the full of that. Sure, if I was the one in charge of the situation, I would set boundaries, limits that should not be passed for interrogation. But, what if I was the interrogator and it was my duty to do whatever was required to extract the information?
Before I watched this movie, I never really cared much what the government had or had not done to terrorists or abetters in custody. I didn't voice any strong opinion about waterboarding or other forms of torture used in interrogation processes. Over the past couple years I have adopted an attitude that basically took it for granted that the United States government and military uses clandestine/black-ops methods in interrogations and operations. I wouldn't be surprised if I had found out that they had deliberately killed civilians in some country to further the fight against another regime or ideology. In fact, I had heard a specific story about such an occurrence. I believe the bigger and more powerful the nation, the harder it has to work preserve its peace and safety.
After watching the film... hey, my opinion hasn't changed that much. I know I could never do such things personally if I had the choice. But, that doesn't erase the realization that my attitude about the rights of humans and even American citizens does not mesh particularly well with my staunch ideas about Constitutional government and rule by law. Or, is the government simply a non-human enterprise that does not need to conform to the same rules that apply to us as humans--laws of decency and respect that stem from our creation?
I think perhaps the movie could be taken to say two different things. You could possibly come to the conclusion that torture is a very necessary, although undesirable, part of maintaining national defense. Or, you could change your views (if they were different before) that torture should never ever be allowed in any interrogation, for getting any kind of information.
Anyway, I highly recommend the movie for those who may be interested. It is definitely one of my favorites. Thrilling, deep, developed plot... it's all there. It made me a little sick too, though.
"my attitude about the rights of humans and even American citizens does not mesh particularly well with my staunch ideas about Constitutional government and rule by law"
ReplyDeleteI'm confused by this. Care to elaborate?
My problem with the idea in general (and I haven't seen the movie, so obviously I don't know what it has to say for itself), is that people come up with absurdly impossible hypothetical situations in which it is much easier to understand why someone might consider torture to be justified, and then they extrapolate that justification into much murkier situations. The reality is that there is no such thing as the ticking-bomb scenario, nor would torture be likely to work if there were . . . Thoughts?
Also, on an unrelated note, you should cross-post these entries to Facebook so we can tell when you post. I think there's a way to do it automatically (there is on other blogging hosts), but I don't recall how at the moment.
Most people who know me are aware that I have been an harsh critic of the government's general failure in following the Constitution's laws. I have hardly voiced any desire to see the government respect individual rights, civil rights of the people though, except a few of the common conservative holdouts--right to life, right to bear arms.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason for this unbalanced attitude has been one of contempt for the people of liberal and Libertarian leanings who, when they stress the Constitution's importance, do it primarily, and even solely (by appearance, of course, I don't their minds) on the basis that the government is not respecting the civil rights of Americans. They seemed to lose the other side of the coin. I simply counterbalanced them by losing the other side of the coin.
I wouldn't go so far as to say there is no such thing in reality as the ticking-bomb scenario. In addition, a similar scenario has probably occurred frequently in the past ten years or so. What if America had captured terrorists who knew of a plot against the United States that was moving to fruition (intelligence officers of the US had good reason to believe it was a real threat)? And, I know we could argue for a while on what good reason means. In any case, a threat-becoming-reality type of scenario could exist, and it very well may have already.