We Are All Torturers in America

As citizens' outrage over the torture memos
heats up, and the US Congress is barraged with calls to appoint a
special prosecutor, Americans may be about to commit an egregious
miscarriage of justice. Republicans have now accused Democrats in
Congress of having "blood on your hands too" in relation to the
escalating calls to investigate. I would go further: not only do
Congressional Democrats have blood on their hands - but so do we, the
American people. And CIA agents may be about to be sacrificed to
assuage their - and our - actual and associative guilt.

The
suddenly urgent calls by our Congressional Democratic leaders, and even
by many of the American people, to prosecute CIA operatives, military
men and women and contractors who were certainly involved with,
colluded in or turned a blind eye to torture are not only the height of
hypocrisy, they are a form of unconscionable scapegoating. The
scapegoating is political on the part of Congressional leaders, and
psychological on the part of many Americans who are now "shocked" at
what was done in their name.

Hello America, were you asleep for
the past seven years? The fact that the Bush administration used
torture has been the furthest thing from a secret. When the political
winds were with the last administration, which framed qualms about
torture as being soft on "the war on terror", just about every
Congressional Democrat fell right into line to accept it, if not cheer
it on. Even Hillary Clinton supported torture - right up through her
presidential run. Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the torture in
closed-door meetings. When activist groups and citizens called for a
special prosecutor, all we heard from Congressional Democrats was how
they did not wish to spend the political capital.

President Bush
hid the torture in plain sight by championing it. Vice-President Cheney
gave such explicit interviews about his role in directing the policy of
torture that in legal terms, were there a prosecution, they would
amount to a confession. Did the Congress that is now so piously calling
for the investigation of rank-and-file agents and military personnel
express their horror and outrage then? With a very few exceptions, they
did not.

Since 2003 it has been fully documented by rights
organisations, and accessible to anyone listening, that direct US
policy for prisoners included electrodes on genitals, suffocation,
hanging prisoners from bars by the wrists, beatings, concealed murders,
sexual assault threats, sexual humiliation and forced nudity, which is
considered a sex crime in warfare, international and domestic law. Many
voices, from Jane Mayer's to Michael Ratner's to Jameel Jaffer's
to Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, made similar documented charges. Did
our leaders call for investigations? They barely even called for a
moment's consideration; tolerating torture - "tough tactics", "enhanced
interrogations" in those demonic euphemisms - polled well; supporting
it made them look tough in close elections; it was overwhelmingly OK
with them.

And may we please look in the mirror, for the sake of
our own moral health? How many Americans spoke up when it was chic to
thrill to the sadistic soundbite of "take the gloves off"? How many
watched 24
without a murmur when the mass consensus was that it was OK - no,
patriotic - to waterboard a bit? How many of us (as in civilised
societies everywhere when a wind of barbarism is set free) actually
thrilled to the sadistic (and sometimes sexually sadistic) soundbites
that came out of the Bush communications office: the "special sauce",
the "belly slap", the phrase "we have our methods"?

So now the
political and cultural winds have shifted. The members of Congress in
their courage are now starting to call for investigations. Whom should
they investigate? Well, in an ideal world, themselves: by knowing about
and colluding with a declared and documented series of crimes, they are
legally accessories to those crimes. So there is an element of
cover-your-back in Congress finding its high dudgeon at last and
pointing the accusing finger at subordinates in the CIA who obeyed
orders that Congressional leaders helped to sustain as a mockery of
domestic and international law, and as daily, appalling practice.

So
we should call for retired General James Cullen's solution. A former
military prosecutor, he has been at the forefront of calling for
accountability - but the right kind. He urges us to indemnify those
lower down the chain of command to get their testimonies, so they
implicate the ringleaders; and then the only people who should be
prosecuted are, as at Nuremberg, those who directed otherwise honorable
men and women to commit crimes - the lawyers, and those who are on
record as having given the orders: Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush
himself. Lay the guilt where it belongs: on Congress; most
particularly, and legally, on the leadership that directed this policy;
and, emotionally and morally, on our complicit American selves.