Why we can’t just move on
If you’re tired of hearing about torture — memos and reports and disputes about waterboarding and so on — you should be. As Mark Danner explains in his New York Review of Books article “The Red Cross Torture Report: What it Means”:
…the broader discussion of torture is by now in its essential outlines nearly five years old, and has become, in its predictably reenacted outrage and defiant denials from various parties, something like a shadow play.
News of the “black sites” first appeared prominently in the press—on the front page of The Washington Post—in December 2002. A year and a half later, after the publication and broadcast of the Abu Ghraib photographs—the one moment in the last half-dozen years when the torture story, thanks to the lurid images, became “televisual”—a great wave of leaks swept into public view hundreds of pages of “secret” documents about torture and the Bush administration’s decision-making regarding it. There have been many important “revelations” since, but none of them has changed the essential fact: by no later than the summer of 2004, the American people had before them the basic narrative of how the elected and appointed officials of their government decided to torture prisoners and how they went about it.
So why are we still talking about it? First, because of the enormous cost of the Bush Administration’s policies — the policies that were supposed to be keeping us safe and advancing democracy throughout the world:
Torture has undermined the United States’ reputation for respecting and following the law and thus has crippled its political influence. By torturing, the United States has wounded itself and helped its enemies in what is in the end an inherently political war—a war, that is, in which the critical target to be conquered is the allegiances and attitudes of young Muslims. And by torturing prisoners, many of whom were implicated in committing great crimes against Americans, the United States has made it impossible to render justice on those criminals, instead sentencing them—and the country itself—to an endless limbo of injustice.
And second, because official news outlets, even in the face of a report as stark as the one Danner unpacks here — and in his earlier article, “U.S. Torture: Voices from the Black Sites” — still defer to Bush Administration officials’ claims that the U.S. never tortured, and the “enhanced interrogation techniques” they authorized were vital to our safety.
It is a testament as much to the peculiarities of the American press—to its “stenographic function” and its institutional unwillingness to report as fact anything disputed, however implausibly, by a high official—that the former vice-president’s insistence that these interrogations were undertaken “legally” and “in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles” continues to be reported without contradiction, and that President Bush’s oft-repeated assertion that “the United States does not torture” is still respectfully quoted and, in many quarters, taken seriously. That they are so reported is a political fact, and a powerful one. It makes it possible to contend that, however adamant the arguments of the lawyers “on either side,” the very fact of their disagreement makes the legality of these procedures a matter of partisan political allegiance, not of law.
This is the situation that Dick Cheney et al. are exploiting now that they are out of office. When Cheney goes on television to insist darkly, “If it hadn’t been for what we did….then we would have been attacked again,” he can simultaneously insist that we take his word for it, because backing up his claims would require releasing information crucial to America’s safety. As Danner notes, “Cheney’s story is made not of facts but of the myths that replace them when facts remain secret: myths that are fueled by allusions to a dark world of secrets that cannot be revealed.”
That’s why Obama’s decision to release the “torture memos” is an important step, in the country’s best interests. And that’s why suggestions that he’s somehow hurting America by airing the facts are naked political ploys — even if you find them on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
If you’re trying to follow along with the latest revelations, Andrew Sullivan posted a roundup earlier today of reactions from around the Internet — and offered his own take here. But I haven’t found any analysis more helpful than Danner’s article, with its candid reporting on what the Red Cross found in 2007, and his explanation for why it’s vital to air the facts, ugly as they are. As Christians, of course, we ought to oppose torture simply because it’s morally repugnant. But Danner argues that it’s vital in the political arena to answer the question of whether torture “works” (as Cheney insists it has).
Investigating what kind of intelligence torture actually yielded is not a popular task: those who oppose torture do not like to admit that it might, in any way, have “worked”; those who support its use don’t like to admit that it might not have. It is a regrettable but undeniable fact that torture’s illegality, or the political harm it may do to the country’s reputation, is not sufficient to discourage the willingness of many Americans to countenance it. However one might prefer that this be an argument about legality or morality, it is also an argument about national security and, in the end, about politics. However much one agrees with President Obama that Cheney’s “notion” that “somehow…we can’t reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don’t torture, with our national security interests,” [sic: words missing] the fact is that many people continue to believe the contrary, and this group includes the former president and vice-president of the United States and many senior officials who served them.
…The only way to defuse the political volatility of torture and to remove it from the center of the “politics of fear” is to replace its lingering mystique, owed mostly to secrecy, with authoritative and convincing information about how it was really used and what it really achieved. That this has not yet happened is the reason why, despite the innumerable reports and studies and revelations that have given us a rich and vivid picture of the Bush administration’s policies of torture, we as a society have barely advanced along this path. We have not so far managed, despite all the investigations, to produce a bipartisan, broadly credible, and politically decisive effort, and pronounce authoritatively on whether or not these activities accomplished anything at all in their stated and still asserted purpose: to protect the security interests of the country.
The article makes for grim weekend reading. But it is well worth your time.
on April 17th, 2009 at 11:28 am
I see that Obama’s AG Eric Holder has pretty much said that the CIA officials involved in what you characterize as “torture” will not be prosecuted if those officials followed the guidelines in the memos. As well, Obama has also indicated that he will not pursue this matter.
By the way, will you be calling for the prosecution of islamo-fascist thugs for war crimes? That is not just a rhetorical question.
on April 17th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Dick Cheney just makes me want to go to the toilet and throw up.
O, well, now I feel better.
on April 17th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Molie is spot on.
I hope we won’t see a long thread of propaganda fro the Cheneyists here.
on April 17th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Bob Schwartz, I’ve answered you before. One more time:
Please take note this time, because I’m afraid my sense of humor is worn pretty thin on this subject. You will have to forgive me for paying slightly more attention to elected officials who do atrocious things in my name and ostensibly as a favor to me.
on April 17th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Wonder what the Cardinal Newman Society’s position on this. Was any proponent of torture denied communion or an invitation to a commencement address?
http://ncronline.org/news/politics/catholic-academic-ayatollah-shows-true-colors
on April 17th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Bob Schwartz — “Islamo-fascist” is an insulting and empty term. It gives the idea that there is a common identity to all violent extremists of Muslim origin and conflates Islam and “fascism” (which, by the way, is basically a Western phenomenon). We can’t hope to find a real solution to our security concerns until we start looking at dangerous movements in the Muslim world from an informed and critical perspective.
on April 17th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
It certainly has been an important service of Commonweal to expose the use torture, especially by the US government. We can’t move on is right. Who would have ever thought that a President of the US would violate the Geneva convention?
Along these lines it is sad and tragic to read in the May issue of Harper’s how many in the military are asserting that upholding Christianity is the goal of the American soldier. As one soldier put it he feels very close to God when in combat. Here is an excerpt:
“Christian fundamentalism, like all fundamentalisms, is a narcissistic faith, concerned most of all with the wrongs suffered by the righteous and the purification of their ranks. “Under the rubric of free speech and the twisted idea of separation of church and state,” reads a promotion for a book called Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, by Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William McCoy, “there has evolved more and more an anti-Christian bias in this country.” In Under Orders, McCoy seeks to counter that alleged bias by making the case for the necessity of religion—preferably Christian—for a properly functioning military unit. Lack of belief or the wrong beliefs, he writes, will “bring havoc to what needs cohesion and team confidence.”
McCoy’s manifesto comes with an impressive endorsement: “_Under Orders _should be in every rucksack for those moments when Soldiers need spiritual energy,” reads a blurb from General David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq until last September, after which he moved to the top spot at U.S. Central Command, in which position he now runs U.S. operations from Egypt to Pakistan. When the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) demanded an investigation of Petraeus’s endorsement—an apparent violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, not to mention the Bill of Rights— Petraeus claimed that his recommendation was supposed to be private, a communication from one Christian officer to another.
“He doesn’t deny that he wrote it,” says Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, president of MRFF. “It’s just, ‘Oops, I didn’t mean for the public to find out.’ And what about our enemies? He’s promoting this unconstitutional Christian exceptionalism at precisely the same time we’re fighting Islamic fundamentalists who are telling their soldiers that America is waging a modern-day crusade. That _is _a crusade.”
Petraeus’s most vigorous defense came last August from the recently retired three-star general William “Jerry” Boykin—a founding member of the Army’s Delta Force and an ordained minister—during an event held at Fort Bragg to promote his own book, Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom. “Here comes a guy named Mikey Weinstein trashing Petraeus,” he told a crowd of 150 at the base’s Airborne and Special Forces Museum, “because he endorsed a book that’s just trying to help soldiers. And this makes clear what [Weinstein’s] real agenda is, which is not to help this country win a war on terror.”
The lengthy article titled “Jesus killed Mohammed” can be found here.
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488
on April 17th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Liam: You said:
Islamo-fascist” is an insulting and empty term. It gives the idea that there is a common identity to all violent extremists of Muslim origin and conflates Islam and “fascism” (which, by the way, is basically a Western phenomenon)
The common identity is “violent extremists of Muslim origin”. Fascism is used in the sense popularized in politics and fiction: The use of unlawful force to impose behaviors (if not beliefs) held by groups or individuals on others. The Taliban comes to mind. It is not meant in the sense of an economy where businesses and corporations (means of production), though privately held, are under government control.
I did not mean to insult the fascists…well, actually I did.
on April 17th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
“Who would have ever thought that a President of the US would violate the Geneva convention?”
Anyone who has read the texts of the four treaties and has even a basic understanding of the history of these United States since the treaties were ratified. I mean, are you serious? Have you heard of the Vietnam War? Operation Allied Force? The current President violated them in his first week in office for goodness sake. JFK/LBJ – when they weren’t committing war crimes in SE Asia, were torturing Nosenko on American soil – that torture, lasting 1,200 days (that’s 3.5 years) and which is well documented in the Family Jewels, included, but was not limited to, physical beatings, electrocution, and forced ingestion of physchotropics. When they weren’t doing that, they used the opportunity to write a book on how to torture. They wrote a manual actually on how to most effectively torture. As I believe you have mentioned Oscar Romero in the past, you should be heartened to know his killers studied from KUBARK – the name of JFK/LBJ’s torture manual – at SOA (School of the Americas).
The tu quoque fallacy which the current President and many of his followers are so fond of is wholly antithetical to me so I want to be clear that that was not the point of my comment and I fully reject any implication that I may be making a tu quoque case on behalf of anyone. I don’t know if that makes me a Cheneyist, but I do not think we need to commit violence against the truth and the historical record to investigate these current matters.
on April 19th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Bob Schwartz: “Fascism is used in the sense popularized in politics and fiction: The use of unlawful force to impose behaviors (if not beliefs) held by groups or individuals on others.” Well, like I said, let’s use informed and critical terms, not things we’ve gotten out of novels. My question: does it make sense to refer to the Taliban, Hamas, Al Queda, Hezbollah, the Egyptian brotherhood, the current government of Iran, the former government of Iraq, etc. under the same heading even though they have radically different, aims, agendas, and beliefs? What if we were to take every extreme group in Europe and the US from Le Pen’s National Front to the Monatana Militia and call them “Cristio-fascists.” Not very helpful, right? Insulting to Christians, right?
on April 21st, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I don’t know if anyone is still reading this thread, but in case they are, I’m wondering what folks think about article by Damon Linker in The New Republic:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/linker/archive/2009/04/20/thinking-about-torture.aspx
He issues neither a blanket approval nor condemnation for the Bush Administration’s policies, but presents an ethical framework for considering when it might be appropriate to torture.
I should add that I oppose torture and am ashamed of the Bush Administration policies. I don’t see how we can square what the Bush Administration permitted with Catholic notions of the dignity of the human person. The Leo Strauss framework that Linker provides distinguishes between torture during political “normal times” and “extreme times”, and raises the further question, How do we tell which kind of time we’re living in? But istm that, even if we accept the Strauss framework, we need to recognize that the Bush Administration policies did not address a handful of isolated “ticking time bomb” incidents – it perpetrated human rights abuses on a widespread and systematic scale.