For those growing number of Americans who are concerned with what has been and still is done in our names, it's important to know exactly the warning in this regard in the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment that was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by our government in 1994:
"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."
I am quoting from Nat Hentoff, from a piece whose title I borrowed that appeared Friday at Reader Supported News.
There are many reasons some of us who supported Obama for President are now disappointed and even angry. One clear reason for our ire comes from the refusal of his administration to hold those in last administration accountable for the crimes they committed - and there is no doubt that when it comes to torture, crimes were committed.
Nat Hentoff has long been a powerful voice on civil liberties and now on human rights.
On my last day before I get students, when I have many other tasks before me, I felt it important to call this column to your attention and to urge you to read it.
One needs no more justification that Reagan made a clear statement against torture. Or if you prefer someone of greater historical importance, so did George Washington.
I have a few more things to offer from Hentoff, in case you have not yet left this to read his entire piece, and then a few personal comments
Hentoff goes on to quote from the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is a signatory, which requires our government to initiate a criminal investigation of the wrong doings of the previous administration. He immediate follows with this sentence:
Next week, reasons to believe that you and your administration have also been violating the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and U.S. laws.
That should not surprise us. After all, Leon Panetta as Director of Central Intelligence fought strenuously against any accountability for the wrong-doings in his agency before his arrival, including the destruction of tapes that would clearly have shown criminality under US law. As we should well know, failure to hold people accountable for their willful violation of law and international convention inevitable leads to those later attempting to push the envelope even further.
Hentoff is critical of the Obama administrations continued use of the 'state secrets' doctrine to shut down lawsuits that have the potential of exposing the reality of these war crimes - he calls it a "perversion" and I would agree because I believe in a liberal democracy the doctrine is itself a perversion of our basic principles.
The heart of his argument appears in his penultimate paragraph:
We owe it to our next generation and those following to take responsibility for our worldwide shame of having become a torture nation. As we condemn other nations' crimes against their citizens Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, et al our government makes it easier for those countries to escape accountability by utterly denying our own complicity in the cruel, inhumane, degrading torture that has given terrorists around the world so valuable a means for recruiting more terrorists.
Her I find myself bothered. While I agree with all the arguments that can be made against torture, such as its ineffectiveness in obtaining accurate and timely information, and those that Hentoff offers here in pointing out how our use of torture has been counterproductive both in making it more difficult for us to condemn the misdeeds of other nations and in how it is use as a tool to recruit people for terrorist actions against us, my opposition is far more basic - there are some things that are simply wrong, morally unacceptable. Torture of another human being, regardless of the rationalization offered on its behalf, is something that should NEVER be acceptable.
Hentoff points out that none of the Republicans seeking to be nominated in opposition to Obama is likely to raise this issue. His final sentence is
And Obama cherishes their silence.
That means that on this issue, as well as on others, it becomes incumbent upon us not to be silence, lest our silence be taken as acquiescence in such moral wrongs.
We the people of the United States are the sovereigns, not those temporarily elected to high office, not those in appointive or career positions, whether in the military or in the Intelligence community. Thus it is our responsibility to speak out -
Not in our names
Not on our behalf
Otherwise the words offered by Jack Nicholsen in A Few Good Men might actually be an accurate description of our abandonment of our principles. Colonel Nathan Jessup says, shortly before finally being pressured to admit having ordered the Code Red, and just after having told Lt. Kaffee that "You can't handle the truth!"
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
That is the mindset of those who try to tell us we have to trust them, and they do not want to be subject to scrutiny, to our oversight.
Absent such oversight, I fail to see how democracy can survive.
Absent accountability for such moral wrongs, liberty is not merely at jeopardy, it is well on its way to being lost.
If as Hentoff suggests that this administration not only refuses to hold those in the preceding administration accountable for their moral wrongs, but is itself continuing actions of a similar moral culpability, does not one have to at least question whether it has thereby forfeited any moral standing to our continued support?
If we rationalize on the grounds that any Republican would be worse, that the Supreme Court will continue to be at risk, or any other such argument, how then can we answer our consciences? Might we consider the Gospel question of what profiteth a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?
Perhaps you prefer I not refer to fictional accounts from movies nor quotations from religious texts.
Then I ask a much more basic question.
Is there no point at which someone can go that can forfeit their right to your support?
Where is that line for you?
I may not be able to draw it brightly on all topics.
On torture I can.
What about our war criminals, Mr. President?