|
Dick Cheney is not
denying that he was a key instigator, designer, and
supporter of the Bush administration’s torture policies which
were used against detainees at American prisons and elsewhere. His main
objection to the recent release of Bush administration memos
authorizing torture is that the current administration did not
also release memos detailing how successful the torture
techniques were in gaining information that was considered valuable.
There is no question that
totally innocent people were detained, persecuted, and
tortured without any legal process whatsoever. In fact, the
record shows that most of the people captured and mistreated
were totally innocent of any wrongdoing. And yet these
innocent people were fed through a system designed to uncover
which few, if any, out of the many had information the CIA or
other agencies might find
valuable.
Cheney’s logic is that it is
perfectly appropriate to detain and torture anyone you want
because if you can detain enough people who fit a certain profile,
you will eventually find someone who can give you useful
information. According to him and others like him, this makes
torture an appropriate intelligence
gathering tool and this efficiency justifies its use. You only have to ignore the fact that
torture is legally and morally reprehensible no matter who is
subjected to it, not to mention the irrelevant fact that more
often than not it does not produce any useful information.
I would think that this kind of
thinking would send shivers down the spine of any American,
indeed any human being, who gets wind of it. It means that no
human being is safe and secure in his or her person; that any
person might become a victim of torture, because whether or not
you are tortured has nothing to do with your guilt or
innocence (as if guilt would justify torture in any event);
that whether or not you get tortured is only a question of who
has power over you, and whether those who do believe that you
might know something you're not telling that might be useful to them. It negates the most fundamental tenets of
jurisprudence or human decency that has evolved in Western
Civilization over the last 1,200 years or so. In this
consciousness, anyone in power can do what they
want with you if they think you might know something that they
want to know but might be withholding.
This is the kind of law that
Bush and Cheney and those who supported them understand. This is the
law of the unitary executive, which can only be described as
the law of the despot.
So far, Barack Obama’s understanding of the
rule of law is also out of sync with national and
international norms. During his administration, he apparently
intends that the words “I was only following orders”
should be a
proper defense against being prosecuted for crimes you
commit. And as long as you commit those crimes on behalf of your
government he will consider you to be a hero worthy of praise… that innocent victims of crimes
committed by you and your government are not entitled to any
form of justice… that there is no point in laying blame even
for
the deaths of more than a million innocent men, women, and children
(mostly women and children), and others who were maimed,
brutalized, orphaned, or impoverished because of your lies,
deceit, or betrayal of basic human rights provisions
guaranteed under the US Constitution and international
treaties which the United States not only signed onto, but
which the United States sponsored and promoted.
If these are the people we
elect to protect the Constitution and this is their
understanding of the rule of law, and we allow them to get
away with this, then what does that make us?
Can't you see the writing
on the wall?
Return to
Commentaries
|