Torture is bad - but we're Exceptional so let's not prosecute it

John McCain is one of the few prominent Republicans who knows that torture is not in our best interest (emphasis mine):

Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them.

And yet, like so many on both sides of the aisle, he just can't get that belief in law and order reconciled with his political ambitions and his stake in American politics:

I don’t believe anyone should be prosecuted for having used these techniques, and I agree that the administration should state definitively that they won’t be. I am one of the authors of the Military Commissions Act, and we wrote into the legislation that no one who used or approved the use of these interrogation techniques before its enactment should be prosecuted. I don’t think it is helpful or wise to revisit that policy.

Yes sir, nothing screams American exceptionalism like not prosecuting those who violate the highest laws of the land, simply because those who broke these high laws "were dedicated to protecting Americans." Oh, and this of course makes so much sense coming from the last Presidential candidate from the Party that cast itself as both the sole bastion of law and order, and the only Party that can do homeland security, defense and foreign policy. Seriously, how much more hypocritical on the subject of torture can our nation's purported leaders be?

And as a post-script, if we shouldn't revisit this policy because that would be unwise, what other policies does Mr. McCain propose we not revisit? The tax code? The Draft?

9/11 and American Exceptionalism - Chapter 3 (In which the slumbering beast starts to stir)

Leave it to one of my blogging "heroes" Glenn Greenwald to do a great job of aggregating writings on this issue that I would have other wise missed. That, in and of itself, is one of the central benefits of the blog-o-sphere: good bloggers make it easy for other bloggers to find good source material to work from.

And Glenn has done it again though the sources he has pointed me to are not, for me at least, going to be about scare tactics used to "motivate" voters. Rather, I am indebted to him for allowing me to continue my look at so called American Exceptionalism, and more importantly how (and someday why) the "liberal media" and the Left side of the political aisle are just now waking up to how badly the current Administration is doing.

From Tim Rutten, at the Los Angeles Times, we are treated to this:

James Madison once wrote, "Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." In armed conflict, he argued, "the discretionary power of the executive is extended ... and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people.... No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

Great words written by a great man. And its true that we as a nation have seen our freedoms erode as the "War on Terror" has progressed. We have entered the disgusting legion of nations of torturers - which the media defends. We have begun to allow assassinations of our own citizens without so much as a show trial to cover our backsides. And we continue to allow the federal government to shield private companies and persons from legal scrutiny lest they be forced to reveal "state secrets." All in the name of fighting off a band of radical "Islamic" terrorists who, like "Christian fundamentalists" distort the teachings of their holy text to justify heinous actions in the supposed furtherance of a political and economic agenda.

To be sure, Mr. Bin Laden is probably planning his next attempt at attacking us, and his next and his next. To be sure if one of them succeeds, in spite of our ever growing security state, there will be calls for ever more and ever tougher surveillance. And to be sure, politicians more concerned with keeping their large campaign donations will acquiesce - unless the American People rest back control of our government from the oligarchs sitting at the top of the economic food chain.

My question to you is this - where do we draw the line in the sand? What ELSE do we surrender of our freedoms in the name of physical and economic security? Why and for how long will we continue to tolerate politicians who claim to lead us but seem to only decieve time and time again? When does the pursuit of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" cause us to say enough is enough?

I fear the answer.

The Shame of Barack Obama - protecting torturers

Lest anyone doubt how far we've fallen, as a nation, under a supposedly "liberal" "Progressive" President, read this from the New York Times:

The state secrets doctrine is so blinding and powerful that it should be invoked only when the most grave national security matters are at stake — nuclear weapons details, for example, or the identity of covert agents. It should not be used to defend against allegations that if true, as the dissenting judges wrote, would be “gross violations of the norms of international law.”

All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, the editorial is a response to a decision yesterday by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to deny the opportunity of 5 men to confront and seek punishment for torture they suffered that was arranged by the U.S. through its Extraordinary Rendition Program:

In a
6-5 ruling issued this afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Obama administration a major victory in its efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review, when the court upheld the Obama DOJ's argument that Bush's rendition program, used to send victims to be tortured, are "state secrets" and its legality thus cannot be adjudicated by courts. The Obama DOJ had appealed to the full 9th Circuit from last year's ruling by a 3-judge panel which rejected the "state secrets" argument and held that it cannot be used as a weapon to shield the Executive Branch from allegations in this case that it broke the law. I've written multiple times about this case, brought by torture/rendition victim Binyam Mohamed and several others
against the Boeing subsidiary which, at the behest of the Bush administration, rendered them to be tortured.

Its not enough apparently to strut around on stage and call out Mr Bush for what are most likely violations of war crimes laws and federal statutes - as torture clearly is. Nope, apparently once in office, one has to actually enable future torture by protecting prior torture. That, so the current Democratic theory goes, is how we secure our nation, and show we're tough guys - and thus should be reelected.

Except this sort of thing is a major reason that I'm looking for other liberal candidates to support. Its a major reason that I do not believe the President when he speaks. Its a major reason that I do not trust the President. And since I vote, he ought to be worried about that. Of course he won't be, largely because I won't be handing him big campaign checks next year.

The failures of Democratic "Leadership" In America

George Carlin was, like all truly genius comics, an astute observer of humanity. He was particularly good at observing Americans, and the fact that we will never again see a live performance of “The Five Things You Can’t Say on TV” is sad (though we can now say most of those things).

Carlin’s irreverent take on our society came to my mind as I was standing in the Buffalo airport last night, waiting to board a flight to Baltimore after dropping off my older daughters with their mother. There, on CNN, were yet another set of talking heads, rambling on about how the latest polling shows that Democrats are sagging in terms of respect for their “leadership.” While I couldn’t actually hear the words over our boarding announcement, I think they were discussing this poll, which shows that between 53% and 54% of Americans disapprove of how Democrats are "leading" in Congress.

Now I’m sure the very bright talking heads on CNN had good things to say about why, nine months into the Obama Presidency, Democrats are “falling” so fast. And I’m sure, sometime today, we’ll see something that will make them look . . . less bad . . . for a few minutes. The reality, however, for the Progressives and Liberals who banded together to create this ruling coalition, is that we’re back to losing the war, and losing it very quickly.

See, the Democrats have run squarely AWAY from the best traditions of true liberal politics, and into the sickening embrace of the oligarchs who currently fund today's political activities. Democratic national leaders (and their sycophantic talking head media “spokespeople”) have left behind the true caring for the less fortunate that motivated Johnson’s Great Society. Democratic “leaders” have run away from the prophetic wisdom of Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement, embracing instead what Professor Cornell West rightly dubs an imperial nihilism that seeks dominion and money over true Democracy and real freedom (both personal and economic as well as democratic). In short, Democrats have abandoned the long list of their accomplishments – all of which came from the best liberal traditions and all of which stood once in stark contrast to the conservative ideals supposedly championed by Republicans (but from whihc they are also running in search of mammon).

And so the poll numbers show it. Americans may well be dissatisfied with how the healthcare debate is going, and with the fact that we as a nation tortured people under the color of our national “security,” but I would argue that the dissatisfaction runs deeper. As a nation, we’ve bought into the dream that our Democracy will be, and once was, a debate between two opposing sides where policy flowed from the side that made the best, most realistic, case – but also tugged at our souls.

Professor West, in his seminal work Democracy Matters calls us to attend to this malaise, which he posits derives from the twin challenges of that imperial nihilism, and the distractions that are heaped on us to ensure that we, the People, do not notice how badly we’re being screwed by our own politicians. Republican "Culture Wars" that purport to take on abortion, gay marriage, and pre-marital sex are fine examples. After all, in the six years Republicans ruled both the White House and Congress from 2001 through 2007, not one Bill was passed overturning Roe vs. Wade, in spite of dozens of speeches to the Base about its supposed evils.

West notes that this psychic division is most pronounced in our youth, where the real roots of rap and hip-hop (protests of the still oppressive African American condition) are all but lost in the marketing that emphasizes gangstas rolling around in flashy cars with nearly nude women (with no references to overcoming adversity thorugh hard work in the face of real oppression). West believes that the solution to this is Socratic questioning of everyone and everything, and he’s partially right.

We do need to question more, both the assumptions that we make daily, and the drivel that is heaped upon us that passes for journalism. Glenn Greenwald does an inestimable job of this; Tavis Smiley and Bill Moyers are also strong voices crying out against the oligarchs of our day.

But we must do more, and we can do better. Democrats have always failed in their knee-jerk “I don’t want to be the unpopular kid” attempts to become Republicans. We can’t do it, nor should we waste our energy trying. If the current healthcare “reform” debate has shown us anything, it’s that we’ll never win by trying to co-opt the other side.

So let’s stop. Let’s take the Socratic questioning, and ask sternly what America has to gain from Republican efforts to stall real reform. Then let’s embrace our prophetic vision, and reclaim the Left side of the aisle as the place where America’s best moments and most enduring ideals are housed.

Or, let’s just keep our heads down and our voices quiet. Then George Carlin will have been all too right about us:

America has no now. We’re reluctant to acknowledge the present. It’s too embarrassing.

Instead, we reach into the past. Our culture is composed of sequels, reruns, remakes, revivals, reissues, re-releases, re-creations, re-enactments, adaptations, anniversaries, memorabilia, oldies radio, and nostalgia record collections. World War II has been refought on television so many times, the Germans and the Japanese are now drawing residuals.

Of course, being essentially full of S%&$, we sometimes feel the need to dress up this past pre-occupation, as with pathetic references to reruns as “encore presentations.”

We owe it to ourselves, clearly and simply, to see that Carlin’s word do not become the epitaph by which our nation is remembered.

Defending Torture - Richard Cohen, Volume Two

Richard Cohen is at it again – trying to defend torture while running around claiming its indefensible. At least he’s being consistent. I’m not the only one who sees his doublespeak – and calls him out for what he’s saying. Early in the Article he writes:

This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter. It is further complicated by questions about its efficacy: Does it sometimes work? Does it never work? Is it always immoral? What about torture that saves lives? What if it saves many lives? What if one of those lives is your child's?

It’s a nice fiction, but it doesn’t wash. Despite the increasingly desperate claims of the most recent former Vice President, there is not yet one single shred of evidence that any of the information about America’s torture regime has saved a single life. Leaving that issue aside, how can a country that adopted the U.N. Convention on Torture as its highest law (as I detail here) even be thinking about discussing the morality of torture? We’ve long ago declared it illegal, so the morality play part of all this is really moot.

Cohen further writes:

No one can possibly believe that America is now safer because of the new restrictions on enhanced interrogation and the subsequent appointment of a special prosecutor. The captured terrorist of my fertile imagination, assuming he had access to an Internet cafe, knows about the special prosecutor. He knows his interrogator is under scrutiny. What person under those circumstances is going to spill his beans?

Having lived overseas as a kid, I can’t believe that anyone would think that torture of foreigners would make us safer. The Muslim world, in particular, already has along list of perceived and real grievances against the U.S. – why give them one more? For that matter, if we do torture, have we not already begun to dismantle the free-state that is so abhorrent to al Quaeda in the first place?

After wrestling for a paragraph with his supposedly simultaneous desires for absolute security and abhorrence of torture, Cohen closes with this:

The questions of what constitutes torture and what to do with those who, maybe innocently, applied what we now define as torture have to be removed from the political sphere. They cannot be the subject of an ideological tug of war, both sides taking extreme and illogical positions -- torture never works, torture
always works, torture is always immoral, torture is moral if it saves lives. Torture always is ugly. So, though, is the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood.

As with so much else in the torture apologists’ playbook, Cohen overlooks the facts. The United States, by ratifying the U.N. convention on Torture has had a definition of action which constitutes torture since 1994. Hardly “what we now define as torture.” And, given that all the other apologists are indeed sucking both the victims of torture and the torturers into the ideological battle for our nation’s soul, Cohen’s professed concern for the whole thing is far too little, far too late. If he wants to ask a serious question, here’s one – what does the U.S. have to gain by being a nation that tortures anyone in clear contravention of our highest law and Constitution?

American Exceptionalism and its negative impact on our world image

I know regular readers are probably tired of me beating the drum that America's government officials, all the way up to the President need to stand accountable in the legal system for their actions, but I'll keep at it. Why you ask, because . . . .

As we send murderous, crusading civilian units around the world to accompany our invading armies -- while ushering a regime of torture wherever we go -- and then announce we will only Look to the Future, Not the Past, when their crimes are exposed (despite our best efforts to keep them concealed), do we actually expect anyone to take these sermons seriously? (H/T Glenn Greenwald)

The United States is NOT an exceptional country. Despite what so many neocon commentators claim about our superior way of life, the people we elected to lead us made choices that defamed our ideals and trampled on the very notion that we have anything to teach (anymore) about the rule of law. Instead, I think we need to look to others, like Pakistan, and ask what have they done to overcome internal tyrrany. Then we need to apply those lessons here in the U.S.

And a little humility wouldn't hurt us either.

Pakistan's Supreme Court understands how laws apply to leaders - and we could learn from them!

What does it say about America's commitment to the rule of law, and our Constitution, that Pakistan's Supreme Court can rule that Gen. Musharif's imposition of Martial LAw in 2007 was unconstitutional - setting him for a trial on treason charges - yet here in the U.S. we won't (volitionally) even empanel a grand jury to look at whether the Bush Administration authorized torture in violation of U.S. federal law and international treaty?

Who is teaching whom about democracy, exactly?

David Ignatius the excoriates the Security Culture: Or how to talk from both sides of your mouth

Over at the Washington Post, David Ignatius is busy today trying to talk out of the other side of his mouth. He’s writing about the “security culture” that now pervades our nation’s capitol, and to a lesser extent the rest of the nation. His prescription – we should “dial it back a notch” with the impending eighth anniversary of September 11th.

If Mr. Ignatius had a long history of agitating against the semi-police state that America seems to be building Imight buy it. But he doesn’t. Writing on July 15th about potential prosecutions for CIA officers who violated the Bush Administration’s ugly “rules” on torture, Ignatius said this:

“It was a dark chapter in American history that should never be repeated, and Obama has rightly changed the rules. But what would be accomplished by the appointment of a prosecutor in a case where criminal intent would be so hard to prove? The only certainty is that the process would damage careers and morale at the CIA.”

Contrast that with this statement today about security details and the security culture:

“The security culture has its own momentum, wiping away other values, such as openness or privacy.”

It also wipes away the rule of law, a bedrock principle on which this nation was founded. That principle can only be preserved if, going forward, we intentionally look back at our past transgressions, admit to them, and then hold those who committed them accountable. That means prosecuting those who break our laws – right up to the office of the President. Apparently, Mr. Ignatius missed this key point – or he just compartmented these two concepts in his mind – and refuses to tear down the wall of incompatibility between them.

Seeking to bolster his case that we need less security (I suppose to go with less accountability; Less Really Is More), he describes the scene of the Vice President’s motorcade going back to the Naval Observatory grounds each night:

“Maybe it's necessary to have so many cars, but it's a scene, frankly, that reminds me of Moscow during the Soviet days.”

Perhaps it does, but the nation’s intelligence services torturing “enemy combatants” to wring information out of them that fits a certain political agenda also reminds me of the Soviet Union. Since Mr. Ignatius defends such practices by American officials, I can only surmise that he has been gripped by American Exceptionalism Disease. This pernicious illness leads one to believe that an action conducted by Americans is OK, but that same action conducted by other nations, particularly against Americans, is wrong, and often requires military intervention to make right.

Mr. Ignatius closes with this:

“But surely we have reached the point of diminishing returns with the fortress mentality. The truth is, we all must live with vulnerability. It's a part of
modern life. We need to take reasonable precautions, yes. But it would be good for our public officials to step out of the bubble occasionally and smell the roses -- unfiltered by the security detail.”

Sure it would be good, and perhaps they’d learn something. The problem is, whether Democrat or Republican, most folks serving at that level do not, in fact, want to be out of the bubble. Then they’d have to deal with pesky voters, who continue to insist that we, not political elites, run the country. Likewise, once you are out of the bubble, you might actually have to account for your sins, and as Mr. Ignatius has said, nothing good can come from such an accounting.

So stretch those jaw muscles sir – that two sided mouth thing will continue to be quite taxing.

Memorial Day Reflections - What have we lost in their names?

Each Memorial Day, we as a nation are asked to pause and reflect on the sacrifices made in our name by countless soldiers. It used to be an easy thing to do, because we, as a nation, had a lot to defend. But in our descent into rendition, torture and indefinite detention, I am afraid that all those lives have been lost in vane. Those were not the values our soldiers, sailors, Marine, and airmen dies for.

And while we ponder that, let's ask each other another, fundamental question - what does it say about America that we allowed Saddam Hussein (he of the existential WMD threat to our Nation) to be tried in front of judges, with defense counsel, in the Iraqi legal system; and yet we are so afraid of the detainees in Guantanamo that we refuse the trial in our supposedly superior federal court system? How much longer will we run from this duplicity? What are we really afraid of - the prisoners, or us?

The legal case FOR torture prosecutions

As the Torture Watch continues in the blog-o-sphere, there are a lot of defenders of the Bush 43 Administration who do so based on one or more of the following strawman:

• You say we tortured terrorists, but we do it to our own servicemen all the time, so it can’t be torture. A variant is to ask if waterboarding is torture for the same reason.
  
• There’s no legal basis for calling this torture, especially since we’re at war and so we have to circumvent the laws in order to keep our people safe.
  

There are a host of others, but I think you get the point. What they are driving at, as Glenn Greenwald so elegantly puts it, is proving that Serious and Thoughtful People know more then we mere plebs do, and so we must TRUST them with our very existence, lest we all vaporize in the latest terrorist attack.

Now I’m no lawyer. I’m an oceanographer. That means I’m trained to look at things skeptically, ask questions, formulate hypotheses, test them, and then draw conclusions. In this case, that means I want to know what the law actually says we can and can’t do.

So I went to Google, and there, from the U.N. Convention on Torture (At Part 1, Article 1, §1) we read (highlighting mine):

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Scrolling on down, we fin in Part 1, Article 2:

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Further, in Part 1, Article 4:

Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.

And way down in Part 1, Article 16, we find:

Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture or references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Sadly for my many conservative, torture-defending sparing partners, the language could not be clearer on what torture is, and how we as a nation are supposed to deal with it. Basically, the Convention says you can’t inflict severe mental or physical pain and suffering intentionally, especially to get a confession or obtain information. It also says you can’t do that at the direction of any public official; that orders from a superior officer aren’t reason to do it, and that you can’t even do it under the rubric of war. And it says you can't inflict any other cruel or unhuman punishment even when told to do so by a public official or anyone acting in a public capacity.

Ok, I can hear them saying, why do you think this applies to us? It is, after all a U.N. convention, and what right does the U.N, have to tell us what to do?

It’s an interesting argument, until you read the U.S. Constitution. It says in Article Six, Paragraph 2:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary not with-standing.”

Translating that to modern, non-legal English: When the United States enters into a Treaty (which we do by Presidential Signature and congressional Ratification), that Treaty becomes Federal Law, and the language of the treaty becomes binding on the U.S., and particularly our judicial system. And Since President Reagan signed the Convention in 1988, and COngress Ratified it in 1994 (Under Republican control, as I recall), the Convention is the highest law of the land.

In other words, since the Convention on Torture says explicitly what torture is, and that it can not be sanctioned by any public official or in any public capacity, and since it says that the signatories must criminalize the act, and since it says war is not an excuse for torture, And since our own Constitution says this is our highest law; then the U.S. legal system has NO CHOICE but to investigate and prosecute any official for torture

“when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

The President, Vice President, White House Counsel, their Chiefs of staff, and the CIA and military officers are all public officials. The law is exceedingly clear. For anyone to pretend otherwise, is, as I see it, to destroy both the legal framework of the Constitution, and to pervert the intentions of our Founding fathers so they can engage in a sick, revenge drive blood bath. We need to eat our humble pie, investigate and prosecute. Otherwise, we are now a Nation that has 280 Million accomplices to torture in its name.

Shame on us!

UPDATE: Hilzoy has the best response to Mr. Obama's proposal for indefinite detention I've seen to date.

The root of the torture defense - the Republican Culture Wars?

Much has lately been written about the American understanding of, and response to, the actions of the Bush (43) administration, as well as Mr. Obama’s not quite full record in keeping his promises. I won’t rehash what is already on the books, so to speak. Readers interested in my views are certainly invited to browse the blog entries below.

So today, running through my morning blogroll, I was really blown away by Stephanie Z over at Almost Diamonds. This is one of the longest non-fiction posts I’ve seen from this prolific writer in a while, and I read all the way through it. I highly encourage you to do the same.

In a nutshell, Stephanie points out that, as often as not, debates about rules and laws are really debates about cultures, societies, and the definition of “us” and “them.” She weaves this meme together very nicely, citing everything from internment of Japanese Americans to the Bush torture debates. At the end, she notes in what may be her most important paragraph (FWIW) that increasing numbers and kinds of rules, which supposedly further the divide between groups or culture, are also increasingly resource intensive. A very fine closing.

Having read it, I think I am beginning to see the torture debate in much sharper, and perhaps more sinister focus. If, as Stephanie suggests, this debate about the “legality” of the torture actions by that Administration is really a mask for a cultural debate, it makes more sense why the “Law & Order” Republicans are so hung up on excusing law breaking by their highest elective officials. It would also explain why so many former Bush Administration folks are so prominently attacking Mr. Obama these days.

Think about it – the Republican/conservative culture wars have gone on for almost three decades by my shallow count. In that time, we’ve seen conservative commentators and politicians over and over again trot out an “Us vs. them” meme – whether on abortion, gay rights, the economy, or the Iraq war. That latter was, in my view, one of the worst culture war episodes, with the Vice President essentially calling me a traitor to the U.S. because I saw no strategic value in attacking a country that hadn’t attacked us (using trumped up evidence to boot).

Of course the great irony in the culture wars is there is a lot of enflaming of the “Base” with little follow on action. And I do have to wonder if this current rearguard reaction to the call for torture prosecutions will play out the same way. After all, if the Republicans could, for six years, have majorities in the House and Senate, and a willing President in the White House without passing a single Abortion banning bill, how can they really expect to hold off legal action if in fact they broke the law with regard to torture?

Obviously, I need to ruminate over this a lot more to fully see if Stephanie’s meme leads in this direction. Until I’m done though, I just want to say thanks – you made me think, which made my day.

Glenn Greenwald keeps up the good fight on Torture

This may be the most cogent (and most frightening) thing I've seen on the web regarding our post 9/11 actions as a nation. It's a comment (early in the thread too) about Glenn's post today on the Obama Administrations decision to keep some sort of military commission in place to deal with suspected terrorists. PDA's response, and Glenn's whole point, are the reason Mr. Bush and his Administration were such a disaster for the U.S.

UPDATE: See the Comments Section Here and Here for my reasons in supporting prosectuions against Bush Administration officials regarding torture. I need to go lie down now.

America tortures - and the Far Right yawns.

I haven't weighed in much on torture here - but I am commenting elsewhere when I see fit. Part of the reason is that this whole thing sickens me. The other part is other do it so much better.

There was a day when I respected Mr. Krathammer. Almost admired him. But as time goes on, he descends so far into the lap of the Far Right, that I can no longer count him among those whose words I read to frame a cogent opposition argument to my own beliefs. Rush Limbaugh passed that mark many years ago too. These men, who have so often called for greater imposition of their morals as the law of the land on many issues, refuse to sanction the application of that law (signed by Mr. Reagan whom they claim to revere). The double standard is appalling. I hope that some of the other conservative I monitor won't go there, but I fear for their souls as well.

Waterboarding is torture. So are a whole host of other "enhanced" interrogation techniques. These actions have ABSOLUTELY no place in a country supposedly dedicated to the rule of law. They are morally and religiously repugnant acts (their practice by the historical Catholic Church not withstanding). As such, there is no justification for their use other then revenge or unbridled evil masquerading as punishment. And to be clear - a government that tortures others will eventually begin to torture its own.

Glenn Greenwald on Democratic complicity and what "politicizing justice" really means

As Usual, Glenn Greenwald makes an excellent point about the torture debate. Sadly, until the vast majority of Americans are clearly shown how this affects them, he and I are probably still tilting at windmills.

UPDATE: Mark Danner's piece in the Sunday WAPO makes for a compelling companion to Glenn's. Both are correct - we as a nation cannot ignore this assault on our basic principles.

Defending the Torturers - the Richard Cohen Story

Like so many in the media establishment in the D.C area, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen thinks we shouldn't prosecute American civil servants or politicians who engaged in or authorized torture in the Bush Administration. His argument, similar to his Post colleague David Ignatius (and many others in politics here) is that lives may well have been saved, and post-9/11 we all wanted to be safe. So, a few bad guys got really messed up psychologically and physically? So what if the U.S. finally came out of the closet as a harsh, potentially totalitarian state, like many of our “allies.” If we have to do something, a blue ribbon commission will find the truth, set us free, and that should be the end of that.

Well sir, your lengthy career not withstanding, you have it wrong. You are looking at this through the lens of the D.C. national political establishment (where you are an elitist who enjoys certain kinds of privileged access), instead of the lens of the big picture. And you are either ignoring, or are ignorant of the real damage those actions, and their actors have done to the United States.

First, there is really no line between torturing foreigners whom you believe to be a threat, and torturing your own citizens who dare to disagree with you. I know, there is no evidence that American civil servants or military personnel tortured anyone who can claim U.S. citizenship, but there is plenty of evidence that those same officials thought Americans were a threat unto themselves. How else do you explain warrantless wiretapping programs that, even now, are shielded from the public’s scrutiny? How else do you explain the arrogance of telling the American people “So” when it is pointed out to you that 70% of them disapprove of what you are doing supposedly in their name? Among the many things it has left behind, the Bush Administration has left a serious disregard to both American laws, and American institutions.

Second, and perhaps more important, is the legal side of the issue. Our constitution says (in Article Six) “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” It is remarkably straightforward language, especially since it was written so long ago – and basically says that America, once she enters into a treaty relationship that is duly and properly ratified by Congress, must take that treaty law and act upon it as if it had been passed by the Congress itself and signed by the President.

Where that gets sticky for the Bush Administration, and Mr. Cohen’s defense, is the Geneva Convention. The four parts (adopted between 1864 and 1949) expressly govern the treatment of combatants in all types of conflicts. For our purposes, the “war on terror” certainly falls into the definition of the second convention as an international war with involvement of at least one “Higher Contracting Party” – namely the U.S. The second convention has specific requirements for humane treatment, including expressly forbidding torture. And, as a treaty fully ratified and adopted by the Congress, it is the highest law of the land in the U.S.

Thus, anyone torturing in the name of the U.S. and anyone authorizing or directing torture in the name of the U.S. is in violation of the Convention, and the U.S. Constitution, since the later clearly directs the former to be the highest law of the land. A generation ago, we forced a President to resign because he had broken other U.S. laws, though none of the legal issues raised in Watergate were of this caliber.

Yet now, with mounting evidence of a significant breach of U.S. law, Mr. Cohen (and too many others) labor intensively to tell we the people that we should just look the other way. We should not open this wound, prosecute these men, because it will make us unsafe – and potentially take away tools that might save lives later (though there is no specific evidence ever presented to back this claim). Well sir, you are wrong. The best and highest tool we have to defeat terrorists is the Constitution, and the civil liberties and protections it contains. Anything that weakens that Constitution, anything that subverts our laws, is a victory for those who seek to bring us down. And I, as a citizen, refuse to let the Constitution be weakened. Further, I refuse to let it be weakened so that folks like Mr. Cohen can continue to hide from the hypocrisy of claiming to love and support our nation, while all the while destroying it from within just so they can maintain their “elite” status in the fish bowl that is D.C.

UPDATE:
As usual, this is an issue that resonates across new media. Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald for this quote from Thomas Jefferson, which summs up the situation nicely:

"I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269

UPDATE 2:
I hate it when others jump on my band wagon. Ok, Not really.

UPDATE 3:
Apparently, the judiciary is now weighing in - and their take might just surprise you.