Honestly. I am totally at a loss. It is just that I am so conflicted about the issue, that I really don’t know what to say. On one hand, I like the idea of keeping America safe, on the other, the idea of torture makes me sick.
Here’s what I am talking about, this Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal:
The Obama administration has declassified and released opinions of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) given in 2005 and earlier that analyze the legality of interrogation techniques authorized for use by the CIA. Those techniques were applied only when expressly permitted by the director, and are described in these opinions in detail, along with their limits and the safeguards applied to them.
The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.
Proponents of the release have argued that the techniques have been abandoned and thus there is no point in keeping them secret any longer; that they were in any event ineffective; that their disclosure was somehow legally compelled; and that they cost us more in the coin of world opinion than they were worth. None of these claims survives scrutiny.
Soon after he was sworn in, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that suspended use of these techniques and confined not only the military but all U.S. agencies — including the CIA — to the interrogation limits set in the Army Field Manual. This suspension was accompanied by a commitment to further study the interrogation program, and government personnel were cautioned that they could no longer rely on earlier opinions of the OLC.
Although evidence shows that the Army Field Manual, which is available online, is already used by al Qaeda for training purposes, it was certainly the president’s right to suspend use of any technique. However, public disclosure of the OLC opinions, and thus of the techniques themselves, assures that terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them, and can supplement their training accordingly and thus diminish the effectiveness of these techniques as they have the ones in the Army Field Manual.
Moreover, disclosure of the details of the program pre-empts the study of the president’s task force and assures that the suspension imposed by the president’s executive order is effectively permanent. There would be little point in the president authorizing measures whose nature and precise limits have already been disclosed in detail to those whose resolve we hope to overcome. This conflicts with the sworn promise of the current director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, who testified in aid of securing Senate confirmation that if he thought he needed additional authority to conduct interrogation to get necessary information, he would seek it from the president. By allowing this disclosure, President Obama has tied not only his own hands but also the hands of any future administration faced with the prospect of attack.
Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies. Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl, and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the U.S. will no longer interrupt the sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens.
Now, you all know that I was not a big fan of Bush Administration. But I cannot help but wonder, if the Obama Administration did pull a major bonehead move here. One thing that is the source of the authority of the right to enhanced interrogation is, that these Terrorists are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. That being because they are not uniform combatants. While I might agree with that sentiment on a legal or a technical level, on a human and or diplomatic level that argument runs into bunch of problems. You see subjecting persons from countries where you are also importing oil from, to torture, does not do much for your Country diplomatically. The problem is, those who argue against the diplomatical arguement, come off sound like a bunch of Isolationists.
So, I am really not sure, did Obama screw the Country? You tell me? I’m open to opinions, as long as you don’t act like a troll.
Geneva Convention or no, these actions were also prohibited by the Army Field Manual and the ’94 U.N. Convention against Torture. I think what often gets left out is the effect this had on our highly disciplined troops who were given this “Wink, wink. You know what to do.” That’s how our overseas prisons turned into the Milgram Experiment. I know that the memo focuses on the CIA, but 1) they often used the military in their work 2) they’re also supposed to follow the Army Field Manual. Army Field Manual has been the source for interrogation procedures for ALL branches of government since 2005. This off-book behavior benefits no one and I see it as a protective move for the military that Obama has made it difficult for them to be used in that way again. I don’t want to get all U-S-A!, but we don’t need torture to kick ass.
Valid opinion, anyone else?
Whether or not the al Qaeda is uniformed or not is precisely the sort of legal nicety that creates spaces (not on U.S. soil), methods (not worse than organ failure or death), motive (not to inflict pain, but to gain intelligence) that ultimately offers all the fig leaves, excuses, rationals, that turn a nation into a torture state.
Tying the hands of future presidents? That’s, fortunately, what laws do, and what should have tied the hands of the last president.
When you get around to articulating what is sickening to you about torture, why it should be sickening to everyone, and why despite that it is sickening some sick people think it valuable when, on a practical level, it produces less, not more intelligence, when it produces statements that are less, not more, reliable, you might begin to understand both the greatness of humanity, and its terrible failings.