Why write our doctors about torture?

One of my correspondents asked me what the point was of writing to our doctors about torture. He asked what influence he had over his doctor, and what influence his doctor had over the Bush Administration's policies. He said he thought the most effective action is continued exposure of the torture, and that saying you're against torture is "too easy." All good points. Here is my response:

Of course, the torturers need to be exposed. But where do you think the pressure comes to expose them? What drives individuals who have access to torture memos, to photographs, who have witnessed and participated in torture, to leak those memos, stories, photos to the press? It is their sense that what has happened is wrong, and that THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. We do not know who we know who might know someone who does have access, who can make a difference. I may not know a doctor who has served in Iraq and has important information that he/she might be convinced to reveal, but my doctor might. Or others of my doctors' patients might. Or his colleagues might.

In a sense, what I'm urging is exactly like the common advice for job-hunters: Put the word out to everyone that you won't stand for this, they shouldn't stand for it, and they expect their friends, family, neighbors, doctors, bankers, and furniture-makers also not to stand for it.

As it stands today, there are lots of people who don't know what is going on. They don't even know who Alberto Gonzales is, much less why he's important. They have no idea what Biscuit teams are, or why they should oppose them. They saw Abu Ghraib, they accepted the administration's line that this was an isolated incident, and they'd rather not think about torture anyway. No one they know is expecting them to do anything about it, because hey, what influence do they have on the Bush Administration anyway. If they do think about it, they feel helpless, like there's nothing they can do, so they say "well, I don't have any influence." And they think about something else, because hey, torture is just no fun to think about .

In addition, there are a lot of people out there who would say that torture is wrong, except that in this case those bastards killed innocent Americans, they behead people, they are scum, and we have to get information out of them, and what's happening isn't really torture anyway, and it's not worse than they deserve, and it's guilty people, and so on. These people may not be able to be convinced that torture is wrong in any circumstances, but they can be convinced they are in the minority, if enough of those who think torture is wrong speak up. But if we don't speak up because we assume that everyone else thinks torture is always wrong, then those people won't know they're in the minority.

If we each personally took responsibility for influencing all the people we do have influence over, then the wave of personal responsibility will spread, and very quickly reach the people who have more direct responsibility. As for whether you have any actual influence over your doctor, I don't know. But I suspect the simple shock of receiving a letter from a patient about a non-medical issue will cause your doctor to give the letter a real reading, out of curiosity if nothing else. Having read the letter, your doctor a) knows what is happening if he/she did not before b) knows that one of his/her patients thought this was so outside the pale that he contacted his doctor about it, breaking a very strong taboo against bringing 'politics' into a 'business' or 'patient-doctor' relationship, and turning the traditional patient-doctor authority upside down by asserting a moral authority over your doctor. Both of these circumstances increase the likelihood that your doctor will also act by making it clear to everyone he/she knows that something very wrong is happening. Perhaps not by very much, but by a little bit.

I've just finished reading a book based on extensive post-war interviews with rank-and-file members of the Nazi party, They Thought They Were Free. I wrote a blog entry about what I learned from it, at http://www.kafka.com/politics/2005/01/new-years-resolutions.php I hope you'll read it, I think it's very relevant here. And then I hope you'll say, well, maybe I don't have any influence over my doctor, but maybe I do. If it's so easy (too easy, you say) to say you're against torture, then why not say it?