It is an interesting phenomenon, given this country’s war fatigue, that, while feature films focusing on the “War on Terror” bomb with both critics and the box-office, those documentaries brave enough to tackle the toxic topic are some of the most heralded films of the year.

Director Alex Gibney’s (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) somewhat inelegantly titled Taxi to the Dark Side is a harrowing gut-punch to America’s belief in its own unassailable righteousness. The scalding, Oscar-nominated documentary examines the Bush administration’s policy of using torture when interrogating political prisoners scooped up in Iraq and Afghanistan and how that policy has shattered this country’s reputation abroad. The title of the film comes from the story of an Afghani taxi driver named Dilawar, who was mistakenly branded as a terrorist, arrested and beaten to death in his cell by American troops. Dilawar’s story is but Gibney’s leaping off point to scrutinize this country’s tacit endorsement of torture.

While internal military investigations into detainee abuse and casualties focused exclusively on low-ranking enlisted soldiers, Gibney’s scope encompasses the sum of those involved. Drawing on excruciating detail, damning newsreel footage, uncensored photographs from Abu-Ghraib and comprehensive, candid interviews with military personnel (some of whom tortured Dilawar), Gibney works his way up the chain of command of those who permitted such incidents to occur, from “the few bad apples” to the upper echelons of the Pentagon and, ultimately, to President Bush himself.

Gibney is interested in how ordinary, average men and women can be so morally isolated that they are willing to do things they once would have found utterly repugnant. Though the director draws no parallels between the dehumanization of the Arabs in Abu-Ghraib and the Jews in Nazi concentration camps, he hardly needs to. Whenever one person is told that another is less than human, outrages on human dignity always result.

Nothing escapes Gibney’s probing lens. He debunks the so-called “24 Scenario,” bemoans the loss of Habeas Corpus and the disregard of the Geneva Convention, elucidates expert testimony that a torture victim will say anything to stop the agony, decries the tens of thousands who have never seen the light of a legitimate courtroom, and resolves lamentably that if these men were not terrorists going in, they will be coming out.

Taxi to the Dark Side confronts the very things we don’t like to talk about in polite company. The things we would rather not know about. The things we would usually condemn but secretly accept because, well, war is hell. Taxi to the Dark Side is democracy working. It represents press speaking truth to power and a citizenry taking its leaders to task for abominations done in their name.

Whether or not you feel, as Gibney does, that the Bush administration’s policies are tantamount to war crimes, it is profoundly difficult to disagree with his conclusions. Because ultimately, it is not about who committed these transgressions and why, but who we are as Americans and what sets us apart from those who massacred more than 3,000 that brisk morning in September six years ago.

Parse the language all you want, Gibney would say, ultimately you must confront the fact that if the U.S. is to maintain its now tenuous hold on its place as the world leader and champion for human rights and democracy, its standards must be above reproach. It is not enough to tell the world we stand for freedom, democracy, righteousness and justice — we must show them we are free, democratic, righteous and just.

If we are to be better than our enemies, we mustn’t become our enemies.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.