Tortured Logic

As we become embroiled once again in Middle Eastern warfare, facing monsters prone to torturing, slow, excruciating and painful beheading and out-and-out genocide, the proclivity of American officials to apply “enhanced interrogation” techniques – torture under almost any internationally-sanctioned treat in the world – has to be powerful. We don’t pay ransom to fund these bastards, but innocents are suffering nonetheless.

Retaliation and extracting needed information blend to justify the action, but as you watch operatives of the Islamic State don prisoners in Gitmo orange and routinely replicate the same CIA-secret-prison-waterboarding-and-other-nasty-techniques on their captives, particularly those from the West, it is a harsh reminder that our past admitted actions have created moral justification to others to apply those techniques to innocent civilians who have fallen into their hand and most certainly to American soldiers they may someday capture.

But doesn’t the United States now clearly come down against applying these obvious torture techniques against our captives? Not exactly. Didn’t the President not only admit that these techniques are in fact “torture” but added, by a 2009 executive order, that the American government would not apply these techniques anywhere? Yes, but… It’s an executive order, a document that can be rescinded by any sitting president, even Obama himself.

There is no statute or treaty that imposes a clear ban on an American government official’s or soldier’s applying torture, as long as that action occurs outside of the United States itself. “When the Bush administration revealed in 2005 that it was secretly interpreting a treaty ban on ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ as not applying to C.I.A. and military prisons overseas, Barack Obama, then a newly elected Democratic senator from Illinois, joined in a bipartisan protest.” New York Times, October 18^th. But as President, Mr. Obama has stopped short of extending his executive order into an official acceptance of a treaty that would impose international legal sanctions on us for such activities.

In fact, the Obama Administration, facing an up-coming November meeting of the U.N. Committee on Torture charged with implementing the Convention Against Torture in November, is contemplating quite an unexpected official response to the question of whether this Bush-era interpretation (not applying the ban outside the United States) remains America’s official stance. “President Obama’s legal team is debating whether to back away from his earlier view [opposition to the Bush-interpretation]. It is considering reaffirming the Bush administration’s position that the treaty imposes no legal obligation on the United States to bar cruelty outside its borders, according to officials who discussed the deliberations on the condition of anonymity…

“State Department lawyers are said to be pushing to officially abandon the Bush-era interpretation. Doing so would require no policy changes, since Mr. Obama issued an executive order in 2009 that forbade cruel interrogations anywhere and made it harder for a future administration to return to torture.

“But military and intelligence lawyers are said to oppose accepting that the treaty imposes legal obligations on the United States’ actions abroad. They say they need more time to study whether it would have operational impacts. They have also raised concerns that current or future wartime detainees abroad might invoke the treaty to sue American officials with claims of torture, although courts have repeatedly thrown out lawsuits brought by detainees held as terrorism suspects…

“Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said Mr. Obama’s opposition to torture and cruel interrogations anywhere in the world was clear, separate from the legal question of whether the United Nations treaty applies to American behavior overseas.

“‘We are considering that question, and other questions posed by the committee, carefully as we prepare for the presentation in November,’ Ms. Meehan said. ‘But there is no question that torture and cruel treatment in armed conflict are clearly and categorically prohibited in all places.’” NY Times. No question? Then why not affirm our position under the treaty? There must, therefore, be a question. But there are efforts afoot to hold back needed information for the relevant deciders who need to know, including the voting public.

Did I mention that there are efforts afoot to “sanitize” an upcoming “public” report to the U.S. Senate? “‘The intelligence leadership doing everything they can to bury the facts,’ said [Ron] Wyden, D-Ore., a Senate Intelligence Committee member who has been a frequent critic of the spy agency… The Senate, the CIA and the White House are negotiating over what should be blacked out for national security reasons in the 600-page summary of the report that is set for public release sometime after the November elections.” Huffington Post, October 22^nd. The ruse: to protect the identities of the field officers involved. Too much in the way of specifics, they argue, and their cover is blown. But by editing out the horrific specifics, how valid would that report really be? And it does seem unchallenging to hide identities if that were the real goal.

As much as the case for torture under extreme and dire circumstances can be made, one must always remember that if we are not equivocally opposed to torture at any level, there will always be a legal and moral justification for other nations to apply torture to American captives, military and otherwise. It’s either wrong or it isn’t, and you know where I stand!

I’m Peter Dekom, and in international dealings and persuasion, the United States has lost both power and credibility by itself engaging in morally unacceptable actions.