BobHarris.com - The Sheer Damn Decency Index

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Juan Cole

The Sheer Damn Decency Index

Tag it now -

Thursday, 19 October 2006

First things first: according to virtually every real expert you can find on the subject, torture does not work. That's according to CIA veterans, retired military intelligence officers, and even the U.S. intelligence people privy to the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The US Army Intelligence Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation has made this clear for years, incidentally:

[T]he use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

This is not secret. This is not difficult to find out. It is extremely public and extremely clear: torture does not work.

It is also counterproductive in terribly obvious ways. False information will be produced, wasting vast amounts of time and resources. Torture also radicalizes people, creating even more enemies. It will unavoidably be used against people with no information (remember, most prisoners in Iraq were found to have been arrested by mistake); and the use of torture obliterates any future claim to moral credibility.

Not to pretend that moral arguments ever work, but also: torturing another human being is wrong. Period. If you're a Christian, as the saying goes: what would Jesus do? I'm no expert, but my guess he probably would not hold a blowtorch to anyone's genitals, no matter how many episodes of 24 you've seen. Either you believe your damn religion or you don't.

I bring up the torture thing today because of this new BBC survey on attitudes toward torture in 25 countries around the world. About 27,000 people were asked if they (a) opposed all use of torture, (b) would consent to the use of torture "if it may gain information that saves innocent lives," or (c) had no clue.

Given the vividly public position of experts in the field and the absolute unambiguity of every major religion on the topic, the question really amounts to little more than asking if you're (a) well-informed, decent, and sane, (b) willing to compromise your morals on a false premise, or (c) unable to distinguish between the two.

Here are the results by country, arranged in descending order of basic goddam human decency, using the "against all torture" position as the index:

Who opposes torture the most?

And here are the same results, rearranged in descending order of moral and pragmatic incompetence, using the "I'm frightened, amoral, and woefully uninformed" position as the index:

Who supports torture the most?

There's actually a great deal of good news here. For one, in not one country on earth was acceptance of torture the majority position. Even people in active war zones don't seem to lose their bearings that badly. And here in the U.S., even after 9/11 and the steady drumbeat of pro-torture crap from the lunatic right, Americans still oppose torture by a wide margin, roughly near the global average.

One puzzling note: what's up with India? It's the only country where "don't know" outperformed the other two positions. How is that even possible? My only theory is that the BBC guy there stammered a lot. Weird.