Succumbing to the Dark Side
Torture is a violation of U.S. and international law. Yet, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, on the basis of legally incompetent memos prepared by Justice Department officials, gave the OK to interrogators to violate U.S. and international law.
The new Obama administration shows no inclination to uphold the rule of law by prosecuting those who abused their offices and broke the law.
Cheney claims, absurdly, that torture was necessary in order to save American cities from nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. Many Americans have bought the argument that torture is morally justified in order to make terrorists reveal where ticking nuclear bombs are before they explode.
However, there were no hidden ticking nuclear bombs. Hypothetical scenarios were used to justify torture for other purposes.
We now know that the reason the Bush regime tortured its captives was to coerce false testimony that linked Iraq and Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida and Sept. 11. Without this "evidence," the U.S. invasion of Iraq remains a war crime under the Nuremberg standard.
Torture, then, was a second Bush regime crime used to produce an alibi for the illegal and unprovoked U.S. invasion of Iraq.
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, understands the danger to Americans of permitting government to violate the law. In "Torturing the Rule of Law," he said that the U.S. government's use of torture to produce excuses for illegal actions is the most radicalizing force at work today. "The fact that our government engages in evil behavior under the auspices of the American people is what poses the greatest threat to the American people, and it must not be allowed to stand."
One might think that the American public's toleration of torture reflects the breakdown of the country's Christian faith. Alas, a recent poll released by the Pew Forum reveals that most white Christian evangelicals and white Catholics condone torture. In contrast, only a minority of those who seldom or never attend church services condones torture.
It is a known fact that torture produces unreliable information. The only purpose of torture is to produce false confessions. The fact that a majority of American Christians condones torture enabled the Bush regime's efforts to legalize torture.
George Hunsinger, professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, has stepped into the Christian void with a powerful book, "Torture Is a Moral Issue." A collection of essays by thoughtful and moral people, including an American admiral and general, the book demonstrates the danger of torture to the human soul, to civil liberty, and to the morale and safety of soldiers.
Condoning torture, Hunsinger writes, "marks a milestone in the disintegration of American democracy." In his contribution, Hunsinger destroys the constructed hypothetical scenarios used to create a moral case for torture. He points out that no such real-world cases ever exist. Once torture is normalized, it is used despite the absence of the hypothetical scenario.
Hunsinger notes that "evidence" obtained by torture can have catastrophic consequences. In making the case against Iraq at the United Nations, former Secretary of State Colin Powell assured the countries of the world that his evidence rested on "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." Today, Powell and his chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, are ashamed that the "evidence" for Powell's U.N. speech turned out to be nothing but the coerced false confession of Al-Libi, who was relentlessly tortured in Egypt in order to produce a justification for Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq.
Some Americans, unable to face the criminality and inhumanity of their own government, maintain that the government hasn't tortured anyone, because waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" are not torture. This is really grasping at straws. As Paul points out, according to U.S. precedent alone, waterboarding has been considered to be torture since 1945, when the United States hanged Japanese military officers for waterboarding captured Americans.
If the Obama regime does not hold the Bush regime accountable for violating U.S. and international law, then the Obama regime is complicit in the Bush regime's crimes. If the American people permit Obama to look the other way in order "to move on," the American people are also complicit in the crimes.
Hunsinger, Paul and others are trying to save our souls, our humanity, our civil liberty and the rule of law. Obama can say that he forbids torture, but if those responsible are not held accountable, he has no way of enforcing his order. As perpetrators are discharged from the military and re-enter society, some will find employment as police officers and prison officials and guards, and the practice will spread. The dark side will take over America.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
Dear Sir, As a regular reader of your columns, it is becoming apparent to me that you are not willing to criticize Obama in any substantive manner. The criticisms so far have been very mild and along the lines of how you are being let down by him. It seems that you do not feel the urgency of the moment to criticize this man, who is apparently set on turning what is left of this republic into a marxist state. The danger signs are overwhelming and make Bush abuses trivial by comparison. There are so many topics you could write about. Not a word for instance how Obama is closing down car dealerships who are not Republican donors. Or how Acorn has infiltrated the census process. And I can give you a few dozen other outrageous examples. Instead you serve us with an ill chosen conflation of Dick Cheney and Obama. Whatever Cheney's sins are, you may end up some day praying that Cheney saves you from the destruction of liberty that Obama is bringing. Please stop flogging the dead horse named Bush already. Otherwise I can only add you to the growing list of Vichy Conservatives who are descending into irrelevancy for doing absolutely nothing about what is going down.
Mr. Bailey, you can add to the list of Obama's sins the fact that he has no problem torturing the enemies of his government anytime he deems it necessary - which is what Paul Craig Roberts is warning us about.
During the days of Soviet communism, Russians knew Pravda and Izvestia were both a pack of lies, but they read them anyway. Watercooler discussions arose about why such stories were chosen for publication, and the wording would be parsed carefully in order to glean the truth. For some bizarre reason, Americans lack that capability and accept whatever the telescreen pukes out as news.
It's almost more interesting to listen to the trendy public service announcements, which are issued by Big Brother in order to make us goodthinkers. These were aired 4 to 5 years ago to warn banks that they'd better lend to risky minorities, or else face congressional hearings about their racist lending practices. The Bible says, "be like the sons of Issachar, and be aware of the times."
Anyway, about the torture photos, Obama's TelePrompTer changed its mind.
Well said, Mr. Bailey.
The Catholic faith is clear that torture is an intrinsically evil act. Pope John Paul II listed it as such in Veritatis Splendor. Mr. Roberts and Congressman Paul are correct that waterboarding is a torture tactic. Thus, Catholics should be united in condemning such practices. Regrettably, neoconserative Catholics are contending that not only waterboarding but sleep deprivation and sexual humilation as employed by our CIA are not torture but only "tough interrogation techniques". Give me a break. Anyone who has read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago will recognize these things as communist torture methods. Disciples of the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus have long been notorious for watering down Catholic teaching in order to ingratiate themselves with the Republican elite and non-Christian intellectuals. They will never be taken seriously as pro-life defenders of the fifth commandment if they do not unequivocally condemn these disgusting sins.
Father,
"They will never be taken seriously ..."
This is a good thing Father for they are not serious men.
And as you say, of all people we Catholics should know the futility of torture having tried it in the past ourselves and having had it tried against us so many times in the past. But again, serious men and women know this and those defending it in public can not be taken seriously. Black ops have always been black for a reason and nobody should ever boast of such techniques, however necessary or obscure they may appear on very rare occassions.
There is the issue here of whether information obtained through torture is ever reliable anyway. Supposedly a good torturer could tell. Aside from that, as pointed out here, even though I can come up with many theoretical situations in which torture could be justified, these are extremely specific and limited, once in a lifetime scenarios. I cant think of one real-world case, a case that actually happened, where torture could be considered justified. The real-world, actual facts always trump the theoretical. It's too bad that ideologues dont understand that.
Solzenitsyn wrote once about an interrogator coming home to supper with his hands all swollen and bruised from beating some poor helpless victim of the ideological state, and his wife was so proud of him, because he worked so hard protecting us from those 'enemies of the people'............
@7: "There is the issue here of whether information obtained through torture is ever reliable anyway..."
How is this "issue" morally relevant in any case? Or even an "issue"?
Torture is either right--in any case--or it is wrong in every case. The "reliability" of information obtained via torture is morally irrelevant.
Someone please make an ironclad moral case for deliberately inflicting cruel harm on anyone for any reason. The only possible case I can think of would be cruel harm that is self-inflicted. Even such a case is morally arguable.
Mark,
"Torture is either right–in any case–or it is wrong in every case."
I don't want to be pedantic but there are mitigating circumstances as well as aggravating circumstances in most acts of volition. It seems rather Kantian to me so say always and everywhere etc. My point about torture is that it is wrong and as Aristotle knew, the truth is about what generally happens or occurs and not the exception. This public debate about torture is silly. For heavens sake, a country in which the death penalty is scrutinized for cruelty is at the same time defending techniques of torture in interviewing suspected terroists and suspects? It is definelty wrong to execute a man by firing squad or hanging but Ok to pull his finger nails out and submit him to similated drowning? It is not worth arguing with these folks.
Mr Higdon, you must have misunderstood my post. I was not trying to defend torture, I was pointing out it's unreliability as a further argument against those who think it has some value, and then add to the moral argument against it. Why did you wish to curtly take issue with that?
Robert @ 9: Well said, and I agree completely.
I'm sorry, but Mr. Roberts here has some things that are not quite correct. You can criticize the Bush administration without the need to recur to falsehoods:
1) Mr. Roberts affirms that Cheney "justified the use of torture" on the basis of the inminent danger of possible new terrorist attacks. That is not the basis of the argument. Cheney said that the methods employed were not torture, rather "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques". You may find that just an elegant euphemism, but that was the purpose of the misnamed "Torture Memos". It was to determine, under the current law and international accords signed by the U.S., what methods could be used on captured terrorists to extract information about possible new plots by Al-Qaeda.
The memos were very clear on what methods were to be used and for how long. It did not give carte blanche for torture. Also, in the light of past practices, like rendition of suspects to other countries where they would be tortured, you may argue that the Bush policy of detention in Guantanamo was actually more humane for these people.
2) The Bush administration never used these techniques to link Al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein. Even a strong critic of the Iraq war as Pat Buchanan has said that Bush never linked Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The rationale for the invasion of Iraq, from the Bush administration's point of view, was based on pre-emption, not guilt by association. They said that keeping Hussein in power would eventually lead to a confrontation with a more powerful Iraq in the future, and the permanent conditions of cease-fire prevalent from 1991 to 2003 were unsustainable. You could argue for or against it, but that was the justification.
3) Were these interrogation methods reliable? Well, Cheney has argued that the proof exists, and it only needs the de-classification of the memos, and he requested that. The petition was denied, by the current administration. If the case against the use of these methods is so airtight, Why not release the memos, and prove Cheney wrong?
4) Was waterboarding torture? Well, does the army torture its recruits where it subjects them to the SERE training? To say that in that case they volunteer is absurd. It is like saying that we could only use methods of interrogation to terrorists that they aprove of voluntariliy. Or that criminals should not undergo the good-cop bad-cop routine if they don't like it. Get serious.
5) The Bush administration faced a great dilemma in the aftermath of the attack of 9/11. on the afternoon of that date, the consensus was that the possibility of a new terrorist attack on U.S. soil was a total certainty. The capture of Al-qaeda members (that never complied with the Geneva conventions) put the adminsitration in the need to extract information about the organization and possible new threats.
What if the administration had behaved as everybody has said they should have? What if, because of that, another terrorist attack was successful? Would not Mr. Roberts and other hysterical people be condemning the Bush administration of gross, even criminal negligence?
Let's separate Iraq and Afghanistan. For all intents and purposes, the fight against Al-Qaeda was a noble one, and carried out with highly civilized methods, against an enemy that knows no bounds of depravity in fighting a war. Do not fall into the false pretense of moral equivalence
I agree with the following quote:
"It is now a well-documented fact that al-Qaeda is a western intelligence operation. For a detailed explanation on how the CIA, in collaboration with Pakistan’s ISI, created the al-Qaeda myth, see Norm Dixon’s How the CIA created Osama bin Laden. The current president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, told NBC’s David Gregory last month that Osama bin Laden was an 'operator' for the United States. Zardari’s claim was all but ignored by the corporate media."
- Kurt Nimmo at Infowars, June 4, 2009
I don't believe you have the expertise or the knowledge to judge this issue. How could you? What source documents have you read? Three people were waterboarded. THREE. Waterboarding in the way that it was conducted isn't torture.
Personally, I don't care anyway. In my mind, there is absolutely no technique that should be out of bounds in dealing with primitive monsters who want to take over the world and impose their sick twisted dogma on everyone else.
You people make me sick. Why don't you watch the videos of girls being stoned to death in Iran, of little children dressing up in suicide bomber costumes for school plays and skits?
Do you people not realize who you are up against. Do you not understand the consequences of defeat? Are you all insane?