On the Path to Barbarity
It is no accident that those who advocate war for humanitarian reasons end up justifying torture
Arguments in favour of the legalisation of torture have not lost their capacity to shock. The fact that US attorneys-general and the senior legal adviser at the state department have said they are in favour of it seems proof to many of America’s slide into barbarism. In reality, however, their pro-torture arguments are no different from the claims made in favour of “humanitarian war” and of other forms of military intervention - arguments that, unfortunately, have become increasingly popular since the end of the cold war.
Torture and “humanitarian war” are similar in many ways. Both involve the inflicting of violence in order to force a change of behaviour. Both are predicated on the assumption of guilt: torture is justified because the victim is said to be a terrorist, or an “illegal combatant” who has committed or is about to commit a terrible crime, while pre-emptive war is justified because a state is said to be “a rogue state” violating international law (Iraq) or committing crimes against humanity (Yugoslavia). It is therefore no coincidence that the US administration that justifies its wars in the name of claims about humanity and its right to liberty also advocates the use of torture to protect these.
Torture and war have been the subject of absolute or near-absolute interdiction in international law. In the aftermath of the second world war, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials established the principle that crimes against peace are the supreme crime. Aggressive war “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”, said the Nuremberg judges, who understood that once war starts, war crimes will inevitably follow. It was therefore better to ban it completely. This was done by the UN charter, which declared all war, including so-called humanitarian war, illegal. War is allowed only in the very restricted and clear-cut cases of self-defence and when authorised by the security council. Torture was similarly banned by UN convention in 1985.
Any attempt to legalise torture or war was simply regarded as the thin end of the wedge. Today, however, many people who say they shudder at the abuses committed by the Spanish Inquisition, or by the Americans at Guantánamo, campaign actively in favour of war. Humanitarian intervention became fashionable as soon as Iraq was bombed in 1991 “to protect the Kurds and the Shia”. Now the trump question put to anti-interventionists is: “What would you have done about Rwanda?” Yet this is the same argument as that advocated by the torturer who says he is trying to save lives. Activists in favour of international judicial and military intervention denounce peacemaking and amnesty laws as acts of appeasement, and they typically strive to break down antiwar sentiment by getting people to admit that intervention might be justified in some extreme cases. But if it is, then why not torture too?
This unwelcome campaign to give war a chance persists in spite of the fact that the very abuses that inspired the universal ban on war in 1945 have indeed been committed by the Americans and their allies in their assault on the old postwar sovereignty-based system of the UN charter. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there was no genocide in Kosovo (Milosevic was never charged with it), but many people still regard war as something at least potentially civilised. We need instead to renew the deep conviction that seized the collective conscience of mankind in 1945 that the international system, and the ideas that underpin it, should be structured so as to ensure peace at any price.
John Laughland is the author of several books. His new book, A History of Political Trials from Charles I to Saddam Hussein, will be published next May.
© 2007 The Guardian
DU h
Soon enough Americans ourselves clearly seen.
The children will lead us to the light.
The Gulf War Babies here and there.
Will show us what it means.
To be born into THIS.
Humans have been on the path to barbarity for a few thousand years at least.
They just didnt have the means to be as lethal until the 20 th century.
Torture has been legal in the medical field for quite some time–first non human animal species, and then blacks, jews, unsuspecting american citizens in military funded hospital experiments(where no doctor or nurse blew the whistle).
The notion that human beings are ‘beasts’ under their skin is a refutable perspective. It is a chosen perspective adoped by many who are unable to remember when beliocisty was learned. Perhaps that is why meditation is adopted as therapeutic balancing practice. It is necessary to die to oneslf (shed narcissism) to free onself from the mimicry
of violence. The worlds spiritual traditions (not necessarily religions institutions which have left, right, high and low) are tools for the process.
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. The violence is all there and the conquerer’s flag peeled back because if we don’t know the history we are compelled to repeat it - as has been said.
So what does one do once the glaring lies are laid bare? It begins to seem that the true courage is to be able to discern the difference between pride and dignity, speak truth to power, and actually see what the powers that be try to destroy.
How many hundreds of years ago did the scribe Lao Tzu leave the court of civilization to go live with the ‘barbarians’?
It is but an attempt to retroactively excuse themselves of war crimes by Bush and his complicit Congress. Our country is run by war criminals and their facilitators.
Well that sure would be a short slide for the U.S.A. and some of it’s cronies, like Britain. But if anyone is serious about getting decent people in government and running the country so that it conforms to ideals of honor then the only way to do that is to do away with the whole rotten outfit in charge and the crooked system which they built. Hanging new wallpaper to hide the mould isn’t going to fix anything.
Imperative to read Naomi Klein’s THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which provides the link between Torture Policies and the Disaster Capitalism [e.g., the developers immediately in New Orleans to scoop up poor residents’ land and the land that the public housing now being demolished is on.]
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE promoted by Milton Friedman and his graduates from the Chicago School of Economics who helped upend Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia with ECONOMIC SHOCK and brought in dictatorial/police state governance, with Disappearances and TORTURE POLICIES in place for Milton to have his perfect, unimpeded laisez faire CAPITALISM. Of course, Milton just saw everything as wonderful as the rich got richer, and the poor and the workers [especially any prominent leaders or union dissidents], disappeared, got tortured, and were killed, and the economy tanked for the rest … and still. The tourist trade now who shop at the fancy shops don’t see the shanty towns.
It’s a picture of what is in the works for us.
It’s a picture of the IRAQ scenario. It’s the bursting of the housing bubble with folks not able to pay their mortgages and losing their homes. And it points toward THE AMERICAN UNION [treaty of 2005 Bush signing for the U.S. with Mexico/Canada on board.] We can count on a Blackwater police state with torture as part of the “coming attractions.”
Naomi Klein has armed us with the Truth. And it will hit you in the gut. GET IT. READ IT.
And maybe, just maybe, we can avert the fulfillment of THE SHOCK DOCTRINE that has been and is in the works for most of us and get off this Path of and to more Barbarity.
Both parties are corrupt, except for the few bright stars that are trying their best, like Kucinich, Gravel, Lee and a few others, and maybe Ron Paul, although I have some concerns about particular issues with him.
We’re in an emergency and Naomi Klein is one gutsy, clear-eyed journalist with wholistic vision who recently gave us a gift of the Truth. THE SHOCK DOCTRINE.
READ IT!
From the little I have read of John Laughland’s background and orientation, I am forced to conclude that he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. While he here uses the UN Charter to buttress his argument, he has elsewhere condemned the Hague Tribunal and the UN agency vote that authorized it. Though not without flaws of its own, the David Aaronovitch article on him (”PR Man to Europe’s Nastiest Regimes,” Guardian, November 30, 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1362616,00.html) is worth a read. From the look of things where I sit, Laughland, while decrying U.S. torture, would probably also go to great lengths to find fault with any possible trial and conviction of George W. Bush–one which ought most certainly to take place at the Hague! Another look at Loughlan’s c.v. will show that he probably writes for more conservative outlets than he does liberal ones. Perhaps the Guardian keeps him on hand the same way the WashPost keeps Krauthammer?
Since our invasion of Iraq was illegal, doesn’t that make our troops unlawful combatants? Let’s face it, we’re not on the road to barbarity, we’re already there and have been for a long, long time. It started with our genocide and dispossession of the Native Americans and has been going on ever since. Unfortunately as the developed world, if gradually and by fits and starts, embraces a broader, more inclusive vision of human rights, the US has opted out. Perhaps the single best example is our shameful failure to sign the UN Treaty on Rights of the Child, along with only Somalia, because we did not want to stop executing juvenile offenders and recruiting child soldiers. We could go on to talk about the Landmines Treaty and the International Criminal Court, whose statutes we vitiated before finally refusing to sign. If we had had a moral foreign policy we wouldn’t be dealing with terrorism now, and using the same brutal, hypocritical strategies that spawned it in a futile, counterproductive attempt to defeat it.
+
Our country is sick, caused by materialism, greed, and the lust for money and power. People have decided any action is justified, as long as it supposedly keeps us safe and allows the continuation of our selfish lifestyles. Even the religious institutions are shutting their eyes to the terrible destruction, loss of life, and inhumane methods of interrogation. We are preaching democracy and disarmament to other countries while allowing our country to slide into a merciless dictatorship which could destroy the world to satisfy a few hypocritical maniacs and religous nuts.
C’mon, lighten up! Of course anyone who is allowed to be published in the “Guardian” is going to be a closeted conservative, if you don’t know that then maybe you should get yourself a bottle of JD or a dozen Innes & Gunn and think about your future. Really, can anyone name a war in which torture wasn’t practiced?
Tonight Frontline led with the story of the “rendition” of suspects to be tortured for fear that Americans might get upset.
The Bushits need not have bothered. They should have put the tortures on national television — they would have gotten boffo ratings & the few handfuls who insisted that this really wasn’t right would have been hooted down, or told by Democratic political consultants to wait till the next election to discuss it, and then something really would be done.
“On the path”? We’re smack in the middle of it. The principle of freedom of speech has been shown to be empty by the emptiness of those who are supposed to respond to it.
Torture is a criminal act, period. Torturers and torture enablers need to be prosecuted for criminal conduct. Is there something about this the US doesn’t get? Anbody who tortures; anybody who facilitates or enables torture, needs to be prosecuted. It’s that simple.
Americans have to understand that is not, just a dem, or repub issue, but patterns of believe, these patterns will let them know who they should vote for. the people must learn who is on their side, or on the elite’s side. If there not for you then they are against you, and you family and friends. It war against the haves, and the soon to be have nots, like the broke middleclass.
But, what should have been done about Rwanda? Inaction was bad. I don’t find Iraq and Rwanda to have existed on the same plane.