Let’s Talk Torture

This is a subject that most of us tend to avoid. However, the reaction of a society to torture tells us a lot about that society. After the events in Abu Graib came out, Americans, not everyone, but more than a few, were horrified.

Chiefly, there were both army investigations and a US Senate investigation. We can all speak about how that was done. Or how low cogs in the machine paid most of the price. But in general, the public reacted as Democratic societies do. We recoiled in horror. Yes, the pictures of that infamy will live in horror. It also broke a pattern in the long-standing treatment of prisoners of war. One reason the army threw the book at some people.

I am prefacing this piece with that reaction because, after the assault on the Crocus City Hall, Russia was publicly involved in quite a bit of torture to extract confessions.

I will also have to put a trigger warning here. Some of the descriptions of torture are very descriptive. So, if the subject tends to trigger you, stop reading now. However, I am not including the worst photos. Only a single screen cap via Twitter, with the least triggering image. Nor is this a defense of ISIS. But I hope we all agree torture has no place in civilized societies. And I will add this. It’s not an exception in Russia. Units do this for fun with POWs as well.