"Zero Dark Thirty"

“Zero Dark Thirty,” a movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow about the killing of Osama bin Laden, opens in a few theaters in New York and L.A. tomorrow and in theaters across the nation in January.  The film contains graphic and horrifying scenes of Americans torturing prisoners, and, although it is somewhat ambiguous, seems to imply that at least some of the information used to locate Osama may have been found because of torture.

I don’t plan to see the film.  I am bothered by three things.  First, from what I have read, American agents did not find Osama because of information gleaned in torture sessions.  They found him the old-fashioned way through good intelligence work.

Secondly, if we had to use torture to find Osama bin Laden, then finding him was not worth it.  In fact, I’m not sure spending so much effort was even worth it.  Ask yourself, is the U.S. safer now that he is dead?  Is the war in Afghanistan going so much better?  Did Iran quit working on nuclear weapons?  Did the TSA shut down its airport security operation?  I’ll admit that it felt good to get the bastard, but if we had to abandon all of our ideals to do that, it was too high a cost.

Finally, and this is what bothers me the most about the film, every time torture is depicted, we become hardened to it.  Every time a show like the Fox drama “Twenty-four” is run, more Americans begin to accept that this is something our country and its representatives do.  Not everyone in the audience will be sickened by those scenes.  Some of the viewers will enjoy them.  We don’t want torture to become the new norm.  I’m afraid for millions of Americans, it already has.