Danticat on Torture

Novelist and activist Edwidge Danticat has a lovely opinion piece in the Washington Post about torture:

For many who remember — just as these women do, and my own parents do — what it means to live under a dictatorial regime, a regime in which citizens must leave work or school to witness public executions, torture is not just an individual affliction but a communal one. And now, when political leaders in the United States are asking us as a society to consider not only the legal and moral ramifications of torture but its effectiveness, we are brought closer to these regimes than we may think. If we are part of all that has touched us, as Alfred Tennyson wrote, then we are all endorsers of torture when it is done in our name.

Torture aims for a single goal — obtaining information — but it achieves a slew of others.

The piece is quite au point, considering the fact that the Cheney-McCain deal has essentially given Bush free reign to define what torture is.