The charges against most of the people detained in the…

The charges against most of the people detained in the prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan being nonexistent — the Red Cross reports that 70 to 90 percent of those being held seem to have committed no crime other than simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in some sweep of “suspects” — the principal justification for holding them is “interrogation.” Interrogation about what? About anything. Whatever the detainee might know. If interrogation is the point of detaining prisoners indefinitely, then physical coercion, humiliation and torture become inevitable.
Remember: we are not talking about that rarest of cases, the “ticking time bomb” situation, which is sometimes used as a limiting case that justifies torture of prisoners who have knowledge of an imminent attack. This is general or nonspecific information-gathering, authorized by American military and civilian administrators to learn more of a shadowy empire of evildoers about whom Americans know virtually nothing, in countries about which they are singularly ignorant: in principle, any information at all might be useful. An interrogation that produced no information (whatever information might consist of) would count as a failure.

Sourced

“Regarding the Torture of Others,” The New York Times (2004-05-23 )

Other Susan Sontag Quotes

I’ll take the American empire any day over the empire of what my pal Chris Hitchens calls “Islamic fascism.” I’m not against fighting this enemy — it is an enemy and I’m not a pacifist.
I think what happened on Sept. 11 was an appalling crime, and I’m astonished that I even have to say that, to reassure people that I feel that way. But I do feel that the Gulf War revisited is not the way to fight this enemy. - View Quote Details on I’ll take the American empire any day over the empire…
There is a peculiarly modern predilection for psychological explanations of disease, as of everything else. Psychologizing seems to provide control over the experiences and events (like grave illnesses) over which people have in fact little or no control. Psychological understanding undermines the “reality” of a disease. That reality has to be explained. (It really means; or is a symbol of; or must be interpreted so.) For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied. A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter. - View Quote Details on There is a peculiarly modern predilection for psychological explanations of…
So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful. - View Quote Details on So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the…
Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy. - View Quote Details on Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude,…
The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it has had a much more limited career in photography considered as art. Generally speaking, the honors have gone to the Cordelias. - View Quote Details on The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the…
From “old” Europe’s point of view, America seems bent on squandering the admiration — and gratitude — felt by most Europeans. The immense sympathy for the United States in the aftermath of the attack on September 11, 2001 was genuine. (I can testify to its resounding ardor and sincerity in Germany; I was in Berlin at the time.) But what has followed is an increasing estrangement on both sides. The citizens of the richest and most powerful nation in history have to know that America is loved, and envied… and resented. - View Quote Details on From “old” Europe’s point of view, America seems bent on…
Between two fantasy alternatives, that Holbein the Younger had lived long enough to have painted Shakespeare or that a prototype of the camera had been invented early enough to have photographed him, most Bardolators would choose the photograph. This is not just because it would presumably show what Shakespeare really looked like, for even if the photograph were faded, barely legible, a brownish shadow, we would probably still prefer it to another glorious Holbein. Having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a nail from the True Cross. - View Quote Details on Between two fantasy alternatives, that Holbein the Younger had lived…
In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art, Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a “spiritual” force, for the benefit of the community. - View Quote Details on In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art,…
The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. - View Quote Details on The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary…
Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. - View Quote Details on Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship…