* Christopher Hitchens initially rejected the notion that waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that has been used on prisoners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, constitutes torture. Subsequently, he was asked by Vanity Fair to experience it for himself. In May 2008, Hitchens voluntarily experienced waterboarding, after which he fully changed his opinion. He concluded "if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
Torture according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture is:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on male or female 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"
I guess that depends on if you are Jay Bybee signing the memo legally endorsing the acts or if you are the person on whom these acts are performed. You can
call it “enhanced interrogation techniques” if you’d like but I think it comes down to one question: would we allow FBI agents or local law enforcement to use the same techniques in collecting information from American citizens? The answer is a resounding “NO!” Did the Bush administration and the CIA and U.S. military break U.S. law? Yes. Did we break international treaty? According to Article 7 and Article 5 of the Geneva Convention, Yes. Did it keep us all a little safer? Probably. Was it right to do? No. I write that because the gain did not out-weigh the consequence - the loss of our international moral authority. From the day the towers fell and the Pentagon was attacked, I was fearful that our enemies’ primary goal were to enrage the American public to th
e point in which we sunk to their level. They wanted us afraid. They wanted us to engage in “their” kind of war. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a "take off the gloves" emotional move, led us down a path which ultimately would cost us more as a people and a country than gain through information. The moment now Justice Bybee signed a legal memo authored by John Yoo which redefined what torture was we became a nation of enablers. The moment the CIA and U.S military engaged in torture we became a terrorist state.
The world has a right to investigate. The world has a right to admonish. The world has a right to point out our hypocrisy. We are guilty of losing ourselves. Is it understandable? Yes. Is it justified? I don’t think so.
I disagree with President Obama. The past is not the past. It will linger. We need to be accountable for what we have done and what we allowed to happen. In fact, the Command responsibility or Medina standard of the UN Convention Against Torture demands us to investigate and prosecute offenders or we (Obama), in turn, are breaking international law.
If we want to demonstrate to the world our country is not above reproach and is worthy of its leadership role, we are legally bound to address these actions. We need to investigate, indict, prosecute and possibly imprison those (if any) whom are guilty of bringing this to pass. We would demand the same of any country on this earth and those forget that we demanded such of the German people and the Nazi’s. Because someone tells you it is okay to torture does not make it okay. You are responsible for your own actions. That is why we had Nuremberg. War crimes are war crimes . . . torture is a war crime and “just following orders” does not mean one is exempt of responsibility.
I understand the argument that making government officials responsible for their decisions will hurt future presidents’ ability to attract quality people willing to give their best effort forward, especially in a time of such perceived danger. Being offered a job in which making decisions may lead you to hire an attorney defending your actions hurts recruiting the best possible people for the job. But I think this is a different situation. Bybee and company were doing the political bidding of the administration, not acting in the best interest of the law.
But in the end we, as Americans, are all to blame. The American people allowed this to happen. We wanted blood. We enabled the Bush White House to do what we all wanted them to do. Get revenge! Knowing that some guy with a strange name was being put through hell to get relatively benign information made us feel better. “They deserve it!” some would say with gusto, others with a hushed whisper. Even though it was in the back of all our minds, it is only now when forced to face what we have done, like a child, we realize the error of our hubris and perceived justified blood thirst.
Our leaders failed us. That much is true. But as a people, we are better than this. We give hope to those who have none and this dark period in our history will not only follow us but our children as well. America is supposed to be above such things and apparently we aren’t.
What disappoints me most is that torture may actually have been used to try and make a connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq by the Bush White House. We don’t care how you get the proof that Al-Qaeda and Iraq are connected, just get it. We didn’t use it to keep people safe, we used it to justify an illegal war.
If you ask me, "did we torture?" I would say, "yes we did." And the moment we tortured in the name of our country, we lost our collective soul and our moral authority. This is not a partisan question. It is a question of law and morality.
Don't agree or are you not sure? Read these and decide for yourself:
- Senate Armed Services Report
- Office of Legal Council Memo 1
- Office of Legal Council Memo 2
- Office of Legal Council Memo 3
- Office of Legal Council Memo 4
- Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners at War
- UN Convention Against Torture
FOX NEWS Anchor Shep Smith sums it up best:
4 comments:
Look at you with all your fancy embedded videos! Nice post. I didn't know about that journalist agreeing to experience waterboarding.
I'm impressed that Hitchens submitted to the waterboarding. I still don't like him much but I certainly have a new respect for the man.
I would like to see all of the people who approved waterboarding, all the way up the chain, experience it.
Another thing I still don't understand is when people use SERE as an example of how our some of our troops go through waterboarding training. Don't they understand that they go through that training to help them if they are ever captured by the Really Bad Guys they know what they will be up against? We watch videos of car crashes in high school so we know we are supposed to be careful driving; we don't go out and wreck cars on purpose just because we can.
A friend used the SERE reference this weekend while defending our practices. I pointed out that at no time did the SERE trainees ever think they were going to die. That's the whole point of torture. Also, we convited and put to death Japanese soldiers for using waterboarding on American soldiers . . . how is this not wrong?
Either we are a state that tortures or we are not. If we decide to become a nation that tortures then we better be willing to give up our seat at the UN and all other international organizations. Torture is the first step in becoming a rogue nation (which we actually are anyway).
Post a Comment