Obama failing to defend torture law
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Technically speaking, torture is still against the law. The words are still there, in Title 18 of the U.S. Code:
“Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.”
But thanks in part to President Barack Obama, those words have all the relevance of an archaic law prohibiting pig-selling on Sunday. They mean nothing.
Publicly, Obama claims America has changed course. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order halting “enhanced interrogations.” But that did not restore the rule of law; it weakened it further. If one executive order can ban torture, as Obama claims, then another such order can restore it, simple as that.
And let’s at least be honest — what we have done is torture, sanctioned at the highest levels of government and at least tacitly accepted if not explicitly endorsed by Congress, including leading Democrats. Let’s at least have the moral courage to acknowledge that fact.
In World War II, waterboarding was torture when Japanese soldiers inflicted it on Americans such as Lt. Chase Jay Nielsen, captured in the famous Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. In a tactic that sounds all too familiar, the Japanese claimed the treatment was legal because Nielsen was a war criminal not entitled to protection as a prisoner of war. In later war-crime trials, that defense failed.
To Lt. Col. William Harrison, it was torture when inflicted by North Korean Communists.
“They used the water treatment. They would bend my head back, put a towel over my face and pour water over the towel. I could not breathe. This went on for hour after, day after day. It was freezing cold. When I would pass out, they would shake me and begin again. They would leave me tied to the chair with the water freezing on and around me.”
That is not “fraternity hazing.” It is torture. If it is torture when inflicted on Americans by others, it is torture when we Americans do it. We torture. In the eyes of the world and whatever God you might worship, we torture.
That is difficult for many to accept because we are Americans and we are supposed to be different: Our strength is in our principles and commitment to values.
But what did it take to make us throw all that away? Nineteen men armed with a plan and box cutters?
That is Osama bin Laden’s victory: He scared us into fleeing the high ground.
“All these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse,” bin Laden chortled in 2002. “… What happens in Guantanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces: ‘You hypocrites, what is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?’ ”
As bin Laden understands, the biggest canard of all is that the strong are willing to torture, to do what is necessary, while the weak shy from it. It takes no toughness to order the torture of a creature who is helpless to defend himself, a creature over whom you have absolute control. To the contrary, you torture because you fear that helpless creature — you do so because your fear is greater than the principles of civilization you tell yourselves you are defending.
On the eve of our invasion of Iraq, President Bush issued a warning to the Iraqi military: “War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.’ ”
If a president is to have the credibility make such statements again, we have to restore the rule of law. We should do so not through a criminal probe of what individuals may have done — creating legal scapegoats for a policy that too many supported for too long — but with a candid, nonpartisan investigation of what we did as a nation. Rather than block such a probe, Obama should insist upon it.
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206 comments Add your comment
Just Me
May 15th, 2009
11:56 am
This country has no values when we abort babies, approve of same-sex marriage, rob and steal from one another, allow millions to enter this country “illegally” and say that is ok, lower our educational standards in other to “close gaps”, have generations of sick sex driven people possessed with porn and molesting children, carry-out crimes and ripping off people . . like Madoff. Tell me where are the values that other countries look to America for. I say if we need to waterboard a war criminal . . then do it!
N.J,
May 16th, 2009
10:05 am
The idea that:
“This country has no values when we abort babies, approve of same-sex marriage, rob and steal from one another, allow millions to enter this country “illegally””
Is another absolute absurdity that is the result of Republican inconsistancies based on absolute falsehoods and false assumptions made by conservatives.
Republicans beleive its okay to own a gun and use it for “self defense” under all instances that they FEEL their lives may be threatened. Even during situations when the threat may not be real, and the person they may be kiling might be innocent. The idea that they can shoot any stranger entering their home could mean they might be shooting someone who simply accidentally went in the wrong door.
They then equally assert that the unborn child is an “innocent life” which is based on a religious belief, but not a “medical one”. There are many cases in which a pregnancy OR even the unborn child is either harming the mothers health OR in the process of killing her, and many times when this is occuring this is not an innocent act. It is simply a part of the process of being born and in some cases, the truth is that the child is a “naturally unborn killer”. In all other cases, conservatives assert the right of every person to self defense, however, in the case that the unborn child is killing or causing extreme permanent damage to the mothers health and well being, they wish to deny the mother the medical equivalent of a handgun, and that is an abortion. Simply put, when the mothers life is under threat, when the child is harming her or even there is a threat to the woman’s life conservatives revert to their idea that the woman’s life is trash, and her killer is innocent. In the real world this is totally untrue.
Read most conservative anti-abortion tracts (I will not call them pro life, because there is right to life they completly deny… the woman’s) they assert that pregnancy is a natural and totally SAFE condition. Thats simply an outright lie, and any honest doctor will tell you this.
The Europeans at least are honest about this. Abortion should ALWAYS be an option. But as Democrats and most liberal assert, they should be rare, safe, and we should make certain that they are as infrequent as necessary, and that requires that the SOCIETY create the economic conditions that are “pro-life”…pro “all life” rather than indulge in the moral, ethical, and legal inconsistancies that conservatives always indulge in. The nations that are most liberal, have the most liberal abortion laws, the most liberal contraception laws, the most liberal social safety nets, have the lowest rates of abortion in the world, because abortion is available to those who are threatened by the pregnancy, inexpensive contraception is available on demand, as soon as a person is old enough to become sexually active, sex education, also mandatory at the same age, and finally there are social safety nets that prevent a woman from needing to face the additional burden of needing to take care of a child, in circumstances when her own income will not even take care of her own needs.
The conservative position on abortion is not “pro-life” because it simply asserts that the only life that is of any value is the unborn”.
Of course the idea of making immigration ILLEGAL was always based on an immoral act. Immigration quotas were instituted at a time when white Americans feared that the little brown, red, yellow and black peoples of the world would start coming here, their children become a majority, and then have the power to vote. If anything is immoral, it is legislation that denies poor, hungry, even starving people on one side of a border the right to come over to this side. These people are not threatening our own right to food, shelter and clothing, etc. They are threatening our assumed right to every luxury and comfort that the planet has to offer.
At least the Catholic Church is consistant here. They do not merely assert the sanctity of life, but the dignity of life, and assert that you cannot be anti-abortion and pro death penalty, anti-abortion and anti social safety net. anti abortion and anti national health care. Any Catholic who reads the positions the Catholic Church takes on this requires complete consistancy with regard to all life, not the relativistic position taken by the religious right. The Catholic Church finally states that if a community or society is going to oppose abortion, it has an obligation to provide the life that results with the necessities to live a full and dignified life and the minimum for this is sufficient food, housing, clothing, an education and dignified work to provide an income for those capable of work, and an adeqate income for those incapable of it. If the society requires that each unborn child has an absolute right to life, that same society creates an obligation for itself, and it is immoral to simply push that obligation onto the parents, once society has forced that life onto them.
Then conservatives say “water board a war criminal” of course the same way they support the death penalty. They assert that it is okay to torture ten thousand people even if nine thousand nine hundred and ninery nine are innocent, as long as they are also torturing single guilty person. This is their real position on the death penalty as well. We know with ABSOLUTE certainty that since the death penalty has been reinstated, our society has murdered innocent people by applying the death penalty to them. Conservatives may say that is a shame, but they still insist that it is alright to kill them, because it was a mistake.
In every position, conservatives take an unethical stance, in the guise of ethics, because of the shallowness in which they analyze the circumstances
Lil' Barry Bailout
May 17th, 2009
3:28 am
“No one is above the law, and the president of the United States should be held to the strictest standard of all.”
Hey Walter, you might want to remember that extraordinary rendition is still U.S. policy under this new administration. Does your statement still stand, even thought it puts your Idiot Messiah in jeopardy?
Lil' Barry Bailout
May 17th, 2009
7:04 am
N.J.: “We know with ABSOLUTE certainty that since the death penalty has been reinstated, our society has murdered innocent people by applying the death penalty to them.”
=
OK, N.J., name one.
Mike
May 20th, 2009
8:05 am
Sorry, Jay, but you just can’t jump over the fact that waterboarding is not really torture. This entire controversy is nothing but political noisemaking.
Most of us wouldn’t care if our interrogators ripped off a few arms to determine where the next attack will come from.
Mike
May 21st, 2009
10:33 am
Torture happens in every war – And if you don’t recall your history Mr. Bookman – even George Washington used and condoned torture to try to get info on British tactics and movements. The Great Union Army during the Civil War used torture to the extreme. I know from a letter that my gggreat grandmother wrote that she and 2 of her daughters were repeatedly raped by multiple union soldiers in order to get information on her husband and 3 sons – who were with the Confederate Army – which were camped nearby. So – Mr. Bookman and the rest of you liberal “love peace – not war” jerks – war is hell. And despite what you think about “America should be above such things” read your freak’n history books on war or just ask any Native American about what the Army did to their ancestors (Ever read “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee”??)