During the primary season, Republican Party candidate Donald Trump, who is now president-elect of the United States, pledged to bring back waterboarding “and much worse.” Like most other Republican contenders who vied for the 2016 nomination (and eleven of the twelve Republican contenders in the 2012 race), Trump ran on promises to resurrect the torture techniques authorized for use after 9/11. His premise—and that of other pro-torture candidates—was that these techniques “work”, and that the kinds of people subjected to waterboarding and other forms of brutality during interrogation and detention deserve it. They argued that the cancelation of torture by President Obama in 2009 was a mistake.
While the Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, made no such promises to restore torture, she also gave no indication that, if elected, she would pursue accountability or declassify information necessary to reshape public discourse. Today, a majority of Americans consider torture jusifiable because they have been led to believe it works, or that those foreign Muslims subjected to torture deserved it.
Indeed, popular support for torture has become a litmus test for a particular brand of hard-eyed patriotism on the American political landscape. And that brand has prevailed with the election victory of Donald Trump and the reinforcement of Republican control over both houses of Congress. As the reality of a Trump administration starts to set in, we should ponder whether that new reality will include a return to torture.
