[Peace-discuss] Torture …

[Brussel Morton K.]

 From Mark Danner, gravely concerned about attitudes towards torture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402654_pf.html

…Democrats, on the defensive since 9/11 as the party of weakness on  
national security, saw no interest in taking up a cause [against  
torture] perceived to be deeply unpopular. In the wake of 9/11, taking  
the gloves off was a badge of authenticity. Did Democrats really want  
to make themselves the party that stood for the rights of Khalid Sheik  
Mohammed?
The answer to this question, until recently, was no -- as long, that  
is, as Americans could be assured that torture, called by whatever  
euphemism, was necessary to keep the country safe. Which is why  
Republicans from Dick Cheney on down have been unflagging in their  
arguments that these "enhanced interrogation techniques . . . were  
absolutely crucial" to preventing "a major-casualty attack." This  
argument, still strongly supported by a great many Americans, is  
deeply pernicious, for it holds that it is impossible to protect the  
country without breaking the law. It says that the professed  
principles of the United States, if genuinely adhered to, doom the  
country to defeat. It reduces our ideals and laws to a national  
decoration, to be discarded at the first sign of danger.

This is why torture is at its heart a political scandal and why its  
resolution lies in destroying the thing done, not the people who did  
it. It is this idea of torture that must be destroyed: torture as a  
badge worn proudly to prove oneself willing to "do anything" to  
protect the country.…

…If justice is allowed to follow its course, then some prosecutions  
will eventually come, but they alone cannot lead us back to political  
health. For that, President Obama and Congress need to authorize an  
authoritative bipartisan investigation of what was done and how, for  
that is the only way to destroy definitively the idea that the United  
States must torture to defend itself. For the moment, the president,  
an ambitious leader who wants to "look forward" and not back, sees  
only the political costs of such an inquiry, which will be  
considerable. But the country has already incurred those costs and the  
damage in not paying them now will be far greater.

Like most mystiques built on secrecy, the mystique of torture will  
only disappear once a cold hard light has been shone on it by  
trustworthy people who can examine all the evidence and speak to the  
country with authority. We need an investigation that will ruthlessly  
analyze the controversial and persistent assertions that torture  
averted attacks and will place alongside them the evidence that it has  
done great harm to the United States, not only to the country's  
reputation for following and upholding the law but also to its ability  
to render justice. In torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his fellows  
we have created a class of permanent martyrs, unjustly imprisoned in  
the eyes of the world because they cannot be legitimately tried and  
punished. We have let torture destroy justice.

Those who break the law should be punished. This includes those who  
torture no less than those who kill. But prosecutions of those who  
tortured, if they come before a public investigation, will not end the  
argument. On the contrary, they will appear to much of the country as  
yet another partisan turn in the bitter politics of national security,  
launched to persecute those who only did what was necessary to protect  
the country. They will encourage those who defend torture to espouse  
even more bitterly a corrosive counter-narrative according to which  
only those who torture can be trusted to protect Americans.

To expose this dark counter-narrative to the light of day, to flood it  
with light and then destroy it, is the vital political task, not only  
for today but for tomorrow, when the pressures to believe it, in the  
wake of a further act of mass destruction could well prove  
irresistible. If that happens, America will become something wholly  
different -- and the paradoxes of torture will have entangled us all.



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