No, torture is neither civilian nor military, nor specifi cally French: it is a pox which is ravaging the whole of this era. In the East as well as in the West there have been torturers. It is not so long ago that Farkas tortured the Hungarians and the Polish do not hide the fact that their police, before Poznan, readily resorted to torture as regards what happened in Russia when Stalin was alive, the Khrushchev report is an indispensable account not long ago in Nasser’s prisons, they “questioned” politicians who since then have been elevated, albeit with a few scars, to eminent positions. I could go on: today it is Cyprus and it is Algeria all in all, Hitler was just a forerunner. (Sartre 1964, 2001, 35) As Jean-Paul Sartre recognized when he wrote those words in the 1960s, just by using the terms “torture” or “enhanced inter- rogation” we are stating, whether consciously or otherwise, that the activity we are discussing is outside of the bounds that a consensus in society considers to be acceptable. To make things more complicated, drawing the line that sets that boundary is inherently a subjective judgment. From Ancient Greece to Guantanamo Bay, it has sadly been the absence of torture that is a historical anomaly in human experience, rather than its presence. Justifi cations for its use Preface xiii 4148-1156f-Printer Pdf-0FM-r01.indd xiii 4148-1156f-Printer Pdf-0FM-r01.indd xiii 12/24/2019 11:35:05 AM 12/24/2019 11:35:05 AM
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