I consider myself pretty politically savvy, which is why I chastise myself for my naivetee in the initial aftermath of the Abu Ghraib story. When the reports first started coming through, and snowballed in the ensuing weeks, I thought, "Here's something the Republicans in Congress can't give the Bush Administration cover for. Now we'll see where party loyalty ends and defense of America begins." I honestly thought that. Standing on the other side of that breaking point, I still wonder what I was thinking. How could I have thought, all evidence to the contrary, that the Republicans in Congress would actually step up to the plate and take down their own, after massive evidence that the Administration's own policies and directives led in a clear line to the kind of horrors detainees experienced at Abu Ghraib?
The truth is, since the early days of post-September 11, the question of torture has reared its ugly head in a way that should have made all of us sit up and take notice. When noted defense attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz argued that we needed to allow room for torture, he was roundly shouted down (or at least the attempt was made); what should have been noticed was that the Administration was actually carrying out Dershowitz' ideas. From John Yoo's pro-torture memo to Alberto Gonzalez' description of the Geneva Conventions as "quaint, we should have realized that all the complaining in the world wouldn't change the truth that the Bush Administration considered itself above all law and morality. The results are the horror stories that stretch from Abu Ghraib through "extraordinary rendition" (a horrible buzz phrase that hides the fact the US sends "terror suspects" to third-world countries to be tortured) and Guantanamo Bay prison camp to the recently released report by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe on CIA-run prisons in Poland and Romania (available for reading at Talking Points Memo). There are other highlights, or perhaps lowlights as well.
One such - and I have to apologize for not finding the link; some help in this area would be appreciated - is the story of the US "detaining" the children of one terror suspect for use as leverage. The children in question, pre-pubescent at the time of their capture, would still be barely in their teens. Their whereabouts and status is still unknown; their condition, according to sources that have what little information is publicly available, is horrific. That the United States would even consider such a move shows the lack of any clear moral center in our on-going War on Terror. A willingness to use children as bargaining chips shows who the real terrorists are.
One of the lowlights of the entire business of torture, extra-legal detention, and our various prison sites, is the prevalence of suicide. When reports first surfaced of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay killing themselves, the general in charge preferred to discuss the topic as a method of terrorist war-fighting - those terrorists were killing themselves to make the US look bad - rather than as a direct result of our own, ahem, lack of hospitality. Again, we are treated to the horrors of a lack of any moral center whatsoever - these human beings, none of whom have been charged with a crime, indeed been accused of anything other than being "really bad people" by the Administration, are apparently hanging themselves, or slashing their wrists in a systematic display of "asymmetrical warfare". Such a euphemism hides hideous crimes on the part of American authorities.
From the early days of post-9/11/PATRIOT Act mass arrests and the on-going revelations of the torture of prisoners in American custody, one has to ask oneself: What will it take for us to end this? The Administration is clearly beyond control; they neither recognize any outside authority as controlling its behavior, nor consider any constitutional, legal, moral, or historical restraints as binding. Public opinion means nothing. Congressional measures, laws, resolutions mean nothing. The Administration is completely out of control, and to pretend otherwise is to engage in the ostrich-like behavior of hiding one's head in the sand. We can no longer pretend that there are any acts that are beyond the pale for the Bush Administration.
When Mitt Romney says, as he did during a recent candidates' "debate", that Gitmo should not be closed but actually expanded, rather than let the comment pass, he should be pressed on details, not the least of which is the question of torture. When Mike Huckabee says, as he did recently, that Guantanamo Bay prison is better than the prisons in his own state of Arkansas, this raises all sorts of questions, not the least of which is whether Arkansas is in the habit of incarcerating people en masse without charge, without access to legal counsel, and where the prisoners regularly commit suicide in acts of "asymmetrical warfare" against the state. While I have no doubt that the right has lost whatever moral credibility it might have once had, and that comments such as these are pleasing to the Republican base - a part of the electorate that is simultaneously scared out of its wits and willing to destroy the tattered remains of American reputation in pursuit of ridding itself of that fear - the press should be doing a better job of asking specific questions regarding the realities such phrases seem to endorse. There is enough information in the public record concerning conditions at Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, and now the Council of Europe report to force the candidates to respond to realities rather than feed "red meat" (that's really red because it is full of the blood of the innocent) to Republican primary voters.
The deaths and detentions will continue until the entire structure is dismantled, and orders are given to end all the practices in question. None of that will occur until the Bush Administration is out of office, through election or some other form. I believe it is high time that the issue of torture take its rightful place as topic number one for discussion. Doing that might actually put impeachment back on the table, as it were. The victims of American fear deserve no less.
Virtual Tin Cup
