On Torture
The American 'torture debate' is mostly a sound-bite battle among talking heads with furrowed brows earnestly invoking ticking time bombs, international treaties, and the American image abroad. The authors in this splendid collection discuss torture in human terms—in the experience of torturing and being tortured, far removed from antiseptic talk about costs and benefits, ticking bombs and moral absolutes, policies and permissions. It is essential reading.(David Luban, Georgetown University Law Center)Torture's rehabilitation by the Bush administration is a regression of democracy, destroyed in the name of protecting it. The very great merit of this book by Thomas C. Hilde and contributors is in reminding us of the historical record of these practices, the debates they have aroused in Europe and the Modern West, and the calamity they have wrought. Today, a slippery slope is leading civilization backwards to barbarism in the name of the struggle against barbarism.(Pascal Bruckner, writer and philosopher)If you're thinking, 'Who wants to read a collection of essays about torture?' you may want to reconsider... This fascinating volume examines the nature of torture, its uses, and our perceptions of it.(John LewisBaltimore Magazine)This book appears at an extraordinary moment.(Bill GriffinCatholic Worker)This edited collection is an excellent and illuminating addition to the literature on the torture policy of the Bush administration during its war on terror.. Unflinching and unforgiving.(Karen J. GreenbergCarnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs)Unflinching and unforgiving, Hilde's volume impresses the reader not just with the depravity of the world of torture that the United States chose to enter but with the sense that the road back to human decency will be a difficult one—one framed, as Dorfman suggests, by the refusal to let fear justify that which erases our humanity.(Karen J. GreenbergEthics and International Affairs)