What torture does to torturers | csmonitor.com
"When an individual merges unthinkingly 'into an organizational structure,' warned Milgram, 'a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.'
Government agencies, especially those defending the nation through espionage and military action, depend on personal integrity. Yet they create these 'sanctions of authority.' They can even require unethical actions. When they do, however, they risk creating in the perpetrators either an anguished guilt or an amoral numbness. A convicted Watergate-related figure, Egil 'Bud' Krogh, recalls what it was like to sacrifice conscience for what he saw as President Nixon's unquestionable authority. Whenever you do something like that, he says poignantly, 'a little bit of your soul slips through your fingers.'
That's not what democracy is about. None of us wants our public servants turned into pliant emotional wrecks. And none of us wants the nation cast in the role of the gray-coated Grand Experimenter, calmly overriding individual ethics in the name of collective expediency. With the torture debate over for now, it's time to begin the conversation on the broader differences between moral and immoral authority."
- posted by geoff @ #