America Must Not Justify Torture
In his final months in office, President Bush is desperately trying to improve his place in history. Yet last Saturday, he vetoed a bill that would have banned the CIA’s use of interrogation techniques that are not in the Army Field Manual. Ensuring his title as torturer in chief is not as inconsistent with his hopes for history as it might seem, however.
The quest for a positive legacy dictates what the president does these days. His Middle East peace conference in Annapolis in November and his follow up trip in January were designed to showcase his interest in peace. After all, not only did he spend several hours at his one-day conference, but he dedicated a whole week to visiting the region.
The Goal Isn’t Peace
His approach to achieving peace, however, is not based on diplomacy but his experience as a cheerleader in college. With a few shouts of encouragement, he left the parties to work things out. They haven’t been able to do that for about 60 years, but and have made the most progress when the United States was actively engaged. But then, the goal is not to actually achieve peace, which is beyond the reach of a lame duck with a short attention span. It is to establish Bush’s claim of responsibility in the event anything good happens after he leaves office.
Another legacy building effort was his trip to Africa last month. The president made much of the increased aid that has gone to the continent, especially to those who have AIDS. It was not a problem that received his attention in the early years of the administration.
Chance to Proselytize
Then in 2002 the religious right saw an opportunity not just to relieve suffering, but also a chance to proselytize and preach ineffective abstinence programs — all at government expense. Bush immediately signed on because it allowed him to reward a key constituency and to project a kinder, gentler face in early 2003 as he marched inexorably to war in Iraq.
But that war has put his legacy at risk because it is the accomplishment for which he will be most remembered. Invading a country with no weapons of mass destruction, ties to 9/11 or al Qaeda at a cost that may reach $3 trillion, breaking the armed forces and making America less safe are the fruits of his imperial adventure in Mesopotamia.
It is, therefore, because of Iraq that he had to veto the torture ban. Never mind that a group of religious leaders wrote him calling torture an ”intrinsic evil” that must be ”absolutely” rejected or that dozens of generals and admirals have pointed out that how America treats its prisoners will affect how U.S. troops are handled if captured by the enemy.
And it is irrelevant that, as the administration and any trained interrogator knows, intelligence produced by torture is not just inadmissible in court. It is also worthless. As the Field Manual points out: “torture is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the collector wants to hear.”
The administration had to endorse torture nonetheless because what matters most is convincing the American people the world is a scary place. So scary that only officials willing to trash what this country supposedly stands for can make us safe. And so scary that invading Iraq was justified.
The politics of fear is nothing new for the regime in power and enjoys the support of a chorus of conservative cowards like Justice Antonin Scalia and much of the right wing media.
It works so well, other politicians are eager to copy the technique.
Scaring Americans
John McCain, recently seen embracing Bush on the steps of the White House, has made much of his experience as a prisoner of war. And yet he refused to support the ban. His tortured rationale was that a few surprise techniques are necessary to keep the bad guys from training to withstand those that are publicly acknowledged.
But then McCain’s prospects for becoming president, like Bush’s chances for improving his place in history, depend on scaring Americans enough to paralyze their brains.
Dennis Jett is a former U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique. His book, Why American Foreign Policy Fails, will be published in May.
Copyright 2008 Miami Herald Media Co.
Bush says if you don’t support his strategy of war,
then you don’t support democracy and freedom.
That is baloney.
Strategies of peace are more efficient and cost effective.
Bush says if you don’t support his strategy of war,
then you don’t suppport the troops.
That is offensive.
I support the troops by opposing failed strategies of war.
Bush says if you don’t support unregulated free trade,
then you must be a isolationist.
That is just stupid.
I support fair trade with environmental and human rights protections.
Bush says a lot of things,
and now we can vote for a better script.
“His tortured rationale was that a few surprise techniques are necessary to keep the bad guys from training to withstand those that are publicly acknowledged.”
umm..how does one practice “resisting” drowning? Grow gills?
Despite the title of this piece, America has been justifying torture for quite a number of years now. A. Dershowitz, a yank lawyer, has been quite vocal at advocating breaking the law in order to punish ‘evildoers’. bush has offered his own justifications for this practice long before he was ever elected to any position of power in the usa.
It’s a bit like hearing that america must support democracy - but only do so when the results are those the us gov’t wants. Or how the us gov’t supports the free market - for the workers anyhow, corporations remain the biggest of the welfare queens.
Too late. The USA has, is and will use torture, because it can.
Dennis Jett, having experience in politics, is keenly aware that peace is not the objective of this administration. Peace involves engagement, diplomacy and restraint. Instead it is a handful of corporations that dictate U.S. foreign (and domestic!) policy. Not only Bush, but many presidents before him have consistently avoided using the diplomatic tools available to them (like asking their officals abroad to inform them) simply because the advice wouldn’t mesh with their corporate agendas.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, unless it’s the price of gas.
One of Hillary Clinton’s closest advisors, and likely to have an important role in a future Clinton administration if she were to be elected, has explained that Senator Clinton’s recent conversion to the absolutist no-legal-torture position (prior to November 2007 Sen. Clinton supported having a mechanism for legal presidential torture authorization) … is better from a policy perspective because torture “works better” (gets better results) when government operatives do it ILLEGALLY (rather than legally) in those cases in which torture may be the best thing to do.
Here is the advisor to Hillary Clinton explaining this rationale:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvoFmvcV1ug
After hearing this (and in light of Sen. Clinton’s own past advocacy of legal presidential torture) how certain is it that a Clinton administration will never torture–when a close advisor appears to be winking and nodding that Jack Bauers and Rambos and Clint Eastwoods et al in the employ of the US can go ahead with torture so long as they take the risk of legal responsibility themselves (rather than granted by the president)?
What have we become as a people when we are even having this discussion?
Obama by contrast has been consistent in opposing torture on the same principled grounds that Amnesty International and human rights organizations oppose it in all circumstances.
YOu don’t have to believe in gravity to experience its effects. Ditto the law of karma. Be assured, these power-hungry callous criminals will not be spared. The law is that actions come back ten-fold… “whatsoever you do unto the least of these, is done unto me.” (ME = Creator forces, the unified field that human life energetically reflects.)
CALL BUSH: 202.456.1111
ANY CONGRESSPERSON: 202.224.3121 (ASK FOR THEM BY NAME)
~RIVERMAN 101.~
Is the 101 your IQ, or the number of times you spammed your blogs this week?
Nice thought, Siouxrose, but do you want the good news or the bad news?
The baddies rarely ever get their just deserts while the good get screwed good and proper throughout their lives.
Law of the jungle I’m afraid. Has ever been thus! Sorry. I didn’t make the rules.
www.dangerouscreation.com
KEM,
Don’t feed da troll.
The administration had to endorse torture nonetheless because what matters most is convincing the American people the world is a scary place.
The administration had to endorse torture to be consistent with rightist ideology while rejecting torture is consistent with leftist ideology. You’re either with the right or you’re with the left. The Imperial Chimp said something to this effect but, eerily, it happens to be true but ONLY in the left/right ideological context. Many will propose a balance somewhere in the middle but this is a flawed proposal because of the intensity of the rightist destruction. The US has to tilt about 95% to the left, leaving the rightists just a few crumbs for survival. If this idea sounds extreme to you then you aren’t seeing the crisis of today, which is the result of the rightist element in the public policy - it’s catastrophic war on people. It’s very simple. 95% tilt to the left, nothing less. In other words, total victory for the people against the class war aggressor.
The use of torture will be the legacy of this White House. Shameful.
RTRDRURY: But he also marketed himself as a COMPASSIONATE conservative. Where is the upside/compassion element of a policy of willful torture? What, too, of the forfeited presumption of innocence upon which any valid justice system operates?
DAVID GRAYLING: I speak on the authority of a great many mystics when I suggest that karma is not often proven within the short span of a singular lifetime. When I lived in Key West there was a man with a strange condition that the soles of his feet turned under and he walked with the oddest limps on both sides. When I saw him the thought that flashed through my mind (I am by nature VERY intuitive, I sometimes SEE things before they happen, but I can’t will that faculty, it comes and goes) was that he had been a cruel soldier who shot at a prisoner’s feet saying, “dance! dance!” as he slowly allowed his power over this individual to torture the guy. In this lifetime, he returns crippled by the condition he put another through.
MANY diseases are karmic. This is one way that human beings learn compassion, and often the disease itself is a symbol of what they did to another. None of us are karma-free. As Richard Bach once said something to the effect of, “If you’ve finished learning all you came to learn, look down and see if you still have a body.” The ego is related to Mars, and the concept of self-interest. We all have that ego operating, but the enlightened soul understands that there are ways to arrive at win:win situations that do not cause another to be abuse. This is called diplomacy on a massive scale and linked to Mars’ cosmic counterpart, Venus. Our world lacks this and I believe the deficit is related to the over-identification with masculine macho rites of conquest, rather than intelligent acts of peaceful foresight. The debacle of the US like a blind giant, wasting its blood and treasure on a stupid war that only benefits a very few… may perhaps show the world, this “theater” acting as a metaphor of America’s ultimate script, the folly of war. Perhaps then the great/grave sacrifice of so many will be the final martyrdom the survivors need to build a world on more balanced values than naked force first.
So America must not justify torture. Gee, that horse is already out of the barn.
Okay ~Jeshosep ha~
Hey, were you sober when you picked that nickname? Or is that your real name? LOL