http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10019179/site/newsweek/
Torture's Terrible Toll
Abusive interrogation tactics produce bad intel, and undermine the
values we hold dear. Why we must, as a nation, do better.
By Sen. John McCain
Newsweek
Nov. 21, 2005 issue - The debate over the treatment of enemy
prisoners, like so much of the increasingly overcharged partisan
debate over the war in Iraq and the global war against terrorists, has
occasioned many unserious and unfair charges about the
administration's intentions and motives. With all the many competing
demands for their attention, President Bush and Vice President Cheney
have remained admirably tenacious in their determination to prevent
terrorists from inflicting another atrocity on the American people,
whom they are sworn to protect. It is certainly fair to credit their
administration's vigilance as a substantial part of the reason that we
have not experienced another terrorist attack on American soil since
September 11, 2001.
It is also quite fair to attribute the administration's position—that
U.S. interrogators be allowed latitude in their treatment of enemy
prisoners that might offend American values—to the president's and
vice president's appropriate concern for acquiring actionable
intelligence that could prevent attacks on our soldiers or our allies
or on the American people. And it is quite unfair to assume some
nefarious purpose informs their intentions. They bear the greatest
responsibility for the security of American lives and interests. I
understand and respect their motives just as I admire the seriousness
and patriotism of their resolve. But I do, respectfully, take issue
with the position that the demands of this war require us to accord a
lower station to the moral imperatives that should govern our conduct
in war and peace when they come in conflict with the unyielding
inhumanity of our vicious enemy.
Obviously, to defeat our enemies we need intelligence, but
intelligence that is reliable. We should not torture or treat
inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms,
not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often
produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say
anything he thinks his captors want to hear—whether it is true or
false—if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once
physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members
of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my
enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my
insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide
my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave
them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that
providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.
It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less
than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to
deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which
I once offered.
Our commitment to basic humanitarian values affects—in part—the
willingness of other nations to do the same. Mistreatment of enemy
prisoners endangers our own troops who might someday be held captive.
While some enemies, and Al Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the
principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans
captured by more traditional enemies, if not in this war then in the
next. Until about 1970, North Vietnam ignored its obligations not to
mistreat the Americans they held prisoner, claiming that we were
engaged in an unlawful war against them and thus not entitled to the
protections of the Geneva Conventions. But when their abuses became
widely known and incited unfavorable international attention, they
substantially decreased their mistreatment of us. Again, Al Qaeda will
never be influenced by international sensibilities or open to moral
suasion. If ever the term "sociopath" applied to anyone, it applies to
them. But I doubt they will be the last enemy America will fight, and
we should not undermine today our defense of international
prohibitions against torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners of
war that we will need to rely on in the future.
To prevail in this war we need more than victories on the battlefield.
This is a war of ideas, a struggle to advance freedom in the face of
terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence that
creates terrorists. Prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll on us in
this war of ideas. They inevitably become public, and when they do
they threaten our moral standing, and expose us to false but widely
disseminated charges that democracies are no more inherently
idealistic and moral than other regimes. This is an existential fight,
to be sure. If they could, Islamic extremists who resort to terror
would destroy us utterly. But to defeat them we must prevail in our
defense of American political values as well. The mistreatment of
prisoners greatly injures that effort.
The mistreatment of prisoners harms us more than our enemies. I don't
think I'm naive about how terrible are the wages of war, and how
terrible are the things that must be done to wage it successfully. It
is an awful business, and no matter how noble the cause for which it
is fought, no matter how valiant their service, many veterans spend
much of their subsequent lives trying to forget not only what was done
to them, but some of what had to be done by them to prevail.
I don't mourn the loss of any terrorist's life. Nor do I care if in
the course of serving their ignoble cause they suffer great harm. They
have pledged their lives to the intentional destruction of innocent
lives, and they have earned their terrible punishment in this life and
the next. What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or
official neglect we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget
that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest strength—that
we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an
idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted
interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men
are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable
rights.
Now, in this war, our liberal notions are put to the test. Americans
of good will, all patriots, argue about what is appropriate and
necessary to combat this unconventional enemy. Those of us who feel
that in this war, as in past wars, Americans should not compromise our
values must answer those Americans who believe that a less rigorous
application of those values is regrettably necessary to prevail over a
uniquely abhorrent and dangerous enemy. Part of our disagreement is
definitional. Some view more coercive interrogation tactics as
something short of torture but worry that they might be subject to
challenge under the "no cruel, inhumane or degrading" standard.
Others, including me, believe that both the prohibition on torture and
the cruel, inhumane and degrading standard must remain intact. When we
relax that standard, it is nearly unavoidable that some objectionable
practices will be allowed as something less than torture because they
do not risk life and limb or do not cause very serious physical pain.
For instance, there has been considerable press attention to a tactic
called "waterboarding," where a prisoner is restrained and blindfolded
while an interrogator pours water on his face and into his
mouth—causing the prisoner to believe he is being drowned. He isn't,
of course; there is no intention to injure him physically. But if you
gave people who have suffered abuse as prisoners a choice between a
beating and a mock execution, many, including me, would choose a
beating. The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution
will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche
in ways that may never heal. In my view, to make someone believe that
you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol
to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very
exquisite torture.
Those who argue the necessity of some abuses raise an important
dilemma as their most compelling rationale: the ticking-time-bomb
scenario. What do we do if we capture a terrorist who we have sound
reasons to believe possesses specific knowledge of an imminent
terrorist attack?
In such an urgent and rare instance, an interrogator might well try
extreme measures to extract information that could save lives. Should
he do so, and thereby save an American city or prevent another 9/11,
authorities and the public would surely take this into account when
judging his actions and recognize the extremely dire situation which
he confronted. But I don't believe this scenario requires us to write
into law an exception to our treaty and moral obligations that would
permit cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. To carve out legal
exemptions to this basic principle of human rights risks opening the
door to abuse as a matter of course, rather than a standard violated
truly in extremis. It is far better to embrace a standard that might
be violated in extraordinary circumstances than to lower our standards
to accommodate a remote contingency, confusing personnel in the field
and sending precisely the wrong message abroad about America's
purposes and practices.
The state of Israel, no stranger to terrorist attacks, has faced this
dilemma, and in 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court declared cruel,
inhumane and degrading treatment illegal. "A democratic,
freedom-loving society," the court wrote, "does not accept that
investigators use any means for the purpose of uncovering truth. The
rules pertaining to investigators are important to a democratic state.
They reflect its character."
I've been asked often where did the brave men I was privileged to
serve with in North Vietnam draw the strength to resist to the best of
their abilities the cruelties inflicted on them by our enemies. They
drew strength from their faith in each other, from their faith in God
and from their faith in our country. Our enemies didn't adhere to the
Geneva Conventions. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel,
very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them unto death. But
every one of us—every single one of us—knew and took great strength
from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were
better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not
disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of
them. That faith was indispensable not only to our survival, but to
our attempts to return home with honor. For without our honor, our
homecoming would have had little value to us.
The enemies we fight today hold our liberal values in contempt, as
they hold in contempt the international conventions that enshrine
them. I know that. But we are better than them, and we are stronger
for our faith. And we will prevail. It is indispensable to our success
in this war that those we ask to fight it know that in the discharge
of their dangerous responsibilities to their country they are never
expected to forget that they are Americans, and the valiant defenders
of a sacred idea of how nations should govern their own affairs and
their relations with others—even our enemies.
Those who return to us and those who give their lives for us are
entitled to that honor. And those of us who have given them this
onerous duty are obliged by our history, and the many terrible
sacrifices that have been made in our defense, to make clear to them
that they need not risk their or their country's honor to prevail;
that they are always—through the violence, chaos and heartache of war,
through deprivation and cruelty and loss—they are always, always,
Americans, and different, better and stronger than those who would
destroy us.
McCain is the senior U.S. senator from Arizona.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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