Torture and the Soul of the Nation

In the wake of 9/11 George W. Bush unilaterally scrapped the Geneva Conventions. The decision, which amounted to a lawless power grab, has proven to be one of the most fateful and pernicious choices made by an administration identified almost exclusively its colossal blunders. There is now no doubt that Bush’s executive overreach has led directly to a systematic pattern of human rights abuses so appalling that it rivals the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and the Japanese during the Second World War. That the United States, a signatory and custodian of Geneva Conventions, effectively bureaucratized torture and sadism under the Bush administration, must rank as one of the greatest tragedies in our nation’s history.

For more than two centuries, the United States distinguished itself by rejecting the brutalizing and abusive treatment of prisoners of war. George Washington, for instance, insisted that the Continental Army would not stoop to the barbarous and inhumane treatment meted out by British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries. Scholars and historians universally recognize Washington’s stand against torture was not just a moral gesture; it was a shrewd calculation that brutality undermines discipline in the ranks and strengthens the resolve of adversaries.

Following WWII, the United States led the effort to develop the Geneva Conventions so that the treaty covered every aspect of warfare. Embraced by the entire civilized world the treaty was the law of the land until George W. Bush decreed otherwise. His decision was not debated or subject to a formal policy review. Indeed, Dick Cheney and the vice-president’s top aides circumvented normal policy-review channels and simply had the historically illiterate president sign off on what would euphemistically be called “enhanced” interrogation techniques.

In an Orwellian twist, Bush claimed that although the Geneva Conventions were no longer law, nevertheless the United States would still abide by them as a matter of policy. His assurances would prove false, big time. The “special” interrogation methods employed systematically by the administration included: sexual humiliation, sleep and sensory depravation, waterboarding, numerous other techniques designed to induce extreme stress and discomfort. By any standard – the Geneva Convention, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, and U.S law – these methods constituted torture. However, legal goons allied with the vice-president, most notoriously David Addington and John Yoo, concocted such a narrow definition of torture -- only procedures that led to pain associated with death and organ failure would be considered torture -- that the administration effectively codified the kind of irrational barbarism one normally associated with the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials.

Times columnist Anthony Lewis has rightly characterized the legal guidance Bush was given to the kind of advice a Mafia don would get from his concilierge on how to stay out of prison. Indeed, most of the infamous legal memos have an Alice in Wonderland quality in so far as they attempt to stretch language and push logic beyond the breaking point. Needless to say, the loopholes the Bush administration created were used to asphyxiate far more than common sense.
Harsh interrogation methods, the Bush administration assured the public, were necessary to deal with terrorists. Most counter terrorism experts agree, however, that physically and psychologically coercive techniques are more likely to lead to unreliable intelligence than good information. For instance, the Bush administration adopted techniques used by the Communists designed to break the will of interviewees. But the Communists had only been interested in eliciting false confessions, which they used at show trials, rather than truthful confessions.

It is now clear, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the much of the so-called “intelligence” gleaned from coercive interrogations is of the false confession category. In one notorious case, for example, a supposedly high level al-Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al Libi, admitted after being tortured that he knew of links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. In reality, al-Libi was a comparatively small fish that simply told interrogators what they wanted to hear in order to stop the abuse he was undergoing. President Bush cited al-Libi’s confession as proof for going after Saddam. The Iraq War, in other words, was at least partially a product of a demonstrably false confession.

The corruption of law and language has led inextricably to a degeneration of decency and morality on the part of our elected leaders, civic officials, and military personnel. Those charged with protecting our values have donned black hoods, treated detainees like dogs, and forced prisoners under their supervision to perform unspeakable acts. The origins of such abuses stem directly from Bush’s directive that “enemy combatants” constitute a class of un-persons not subject to even the most rudimentary traditional legal safeguards.

The Supreme Court has since slapped down the administration’s brazen assertion of unfettered executive authority. But there are still a great many hard-line conservatives that believe affording terror suspects any legal protections whatsoever is scandalous. They are mistaken. As Alberto Mora, former General Counsel of the U.S Navy, puts it “The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America.” If we try and carve out exceptions, Mora goes on to note, the Constitution crumbles. That, in essence, is why the Bush administration’s policies, in so far as they have condoned and sanctioned torture, have been so inimical and corrosive of our values.

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