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11 Jul 2006 02:10 pm

The End of Torture?

The United States has now apparently ended the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Gonzales nightmare of abandoning the base-line demands of the Geneva Conventions. After Hamdan, this is a great moment in a war we can now fight as honorably as the United States has fought every other war since the Geneva protocols were instituted. Much of the military, most of the CIA, almost all the JAGs, the Supreme Court and overwhelming majorities of both Senate and House disagreed with the torture policy. But the White House cabal prevailed. No longer - in the Pentagon, at least. As far as the military is concerned, America is America again. And this president's brutality has been reined in. Money quote:

"This was the concern all along of the JAG's," Admiral Guter said. "It's a matter of defending what we always thought was the rule of law and proper behavior for civilized nations." ...
"We should be embracing Common Article 3 and shouting it from the rooftops," Admiral Hutson said. "They can't try to write us out of this, because that means every two-bit dictator could do the same." He said it was "unbecoming for America to have people say, 'We're going to try to work our way around this because we find it to be inconvenient.'"
"If you don’t apply it when it's inconvenient," he said, "it's not a rule of law."

Thanks go to all those, especially in the military, who never gave in to the demands of foolish expediency or the cult of the president-as-monarch. On this day, I'd like to recall the words of Captain Ian Fishback, still fighting for his country in the Special Forces, who saw evil and took a stand while others looked away:

"Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda's, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Others argue that clear standards will limit the President's ability to wage the War on Terror. Since clear standards only limit interrogation techniques, it is reasonable for me to assume that supporters of this argument desire to use coercion to acquire information from detainees. This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution and justice in war. It is unacceptable.

Both of these arguments stem from the larger question, the most important question that this generation will answer. Do we sacrifice our ideals in order to preserve security? Terrorism inspires fear and suppresses ideals like freedom and individual rights. Overcoming the fear posed by terrorist threats is a tremendous test of our courage. Will we confront danger and adversity in order to preserve our ideals, or will our courage and commitment to individual rights wither at the prospect of sacrifice? My response is simple. If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is 'America.'"

The idea endures.

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