WWJT: Who Would Jefferson Torture?

Hopefully you are aware of the latest brouhaha in Washington, in this case having to do with a difference of opinion over the President's preferred interrogation techniques and the degree of clarity, or lack thereof, in the Geneva Conventions. The Republicans have been squabbling over this for a week or so, while the Democrats sat back and watched. The GOP came to a compromise on Thursday, and have a bill they are ready to push. Long story short, if it passes, we'll be sanctioning torture as official US policy. The President will be the final arbiter of what is or is not a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and how bad that violation will be. The bill explicitly forbids anyone from trying to bring the courts into the matter. There was a lot of theater over it, but in the end the President is getting what he wants. Just ask this guy:

Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, said: “We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there.”

Scenic route, ha ha ha. How droll. Sadly, we're not talking about a Sunday drive here, but torture. I wonder if the people flown to secret prisons across the world thought it was scenic. In any event, I can't support this, but there's a lot to say about why.

To start, let me ask you a not-so-hypothetical question. In the days after 9/11, would you have predicted that five years out the country would be debating torture? That we would be trying to figure out, à la Goldilocks, what type or amount of torture was just right? The common refrain at the time, and one I wholeheartedly agreed with then (and still do now), was that we should not bow under the threats of terrorists and allow our ideals to be sacrificed on the altars of fear and uncertainty:

I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.

That's the President, from his address to a joint session of Congress shortly after 9/11. To give him his due, I agree with that sentiment. The proof is in the pudding though, so let's dig a little into those values, and see how well we've done.

In general I think most of us have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about here: honesty, integrity, courage. The sorts of things that Americans at a deep level believe are part of the fundamental fabric of America. These values are part of the mythology of America which informs our national psyche. I'll give you my take on them.

Courage means taking the hard road in the face of difficult sacrifices, and hewing to that road despite personal fears and the blandishments of cowards. Honesty means telling the truth, simply and straightforwardly. It's not enough to adhere to the letter of the truth; its spirit must be honored as well. Integrity is a little trickier to define simply, but it certainly entails taking responsibility for one's actions and decisions. It could perhaps be summed up as 'doing the right thing'. And one other that I'll add: competence. I think most Americans think we are, if nothing else, a practical folk who gets things done.

Honesty
The President has been clamoring for a bill that would retroactively legalize the illegal (or 'tough alternative' in the President's words) interrogation techniques that have been in use for some time now.

The senators agreed to a White House proposal to make the standard on interrogation treatment retroactive to 1997, so C.I.A. and military personnel could not be prosecuted for past treatment under standards the administration considers vague.

The techniques are torture and they are illegal. Having signed onto the Geneva Convention, it is as legally binding as any domestic law we might pass. From Article 6 of the Constitution:

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be Supreme Law of the land;

We signed onto the Geneva Convention; we have to adhere to it. When the President says that his alternative procedures are legal, understand that this is based on the judgement of his Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, a man who famously called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint'. Quaint or not, they are the law. Aside from that, many legal and Constitutional scholars have not been kind to the professional opinions of Mr. Gonzales. These arguments are not honest, and they are not made in good faith.

The same can be said for the claim that they need clarification. This is insulting in the extreme. We managed to get through some fifty-odd years, during which time we were involved in a number of struggles (not least the Cold War), without having to clarify them. This is the argument of a type of mind known as a Rules Lawyer. You know the sort: they nitpick and argue over the slightest nuance of every rule, in the process destroying the spirit of the thing. Rules Lawyers never argue in good faith. Their only intent is to win the argument, by hook or by crook. This is a habit that one would hope men in their sixties would have outgrown. Instead, we have to catalog every possible horrifying act we can think of lest we find ourselves dealing with this: "Ok, we can't cut their thumbs off, but it doesn't say anything about smashing them with a hammer. I guess that's not torture."

Please. Let me clear this up. Shorter Geneva Conventions: Treat people with respect and dignity.


Courage
Let's assume for the sake of argument that torturing people is something we feel we shouldn't do. Are we, as a country, going to let a rabble of cave-dwelling fanatics scare us into tinkering with that ideal, or abandon it? I understand that many people are truly afraid of the terrorist threat. Speaking for myself, as someone who lived in Boston, launching pad for 9/11, and in Seattle, the target of the foiled Millenium Plot, terrorism doesn't particularly scare me. The statistics of it just aren't compelling to me. I can respect it if other people don't feel that way though. BUT, that's where courage comes in. Courage says, "No! I won't take the easy road. I'll take the hard road, and I may fail, but I'm going to stick to it." In this case, the hard road is abiding by the Geneva Conventions.

As for the President's personal behavior, asking for a retroactive bill is craven, and the fact that it bars the courts from any jurisdiction in the matter speaks for itself. Given the conservative bent of the Supreme Court, he must know he's on extremely shaky ground if he feels he needs to protect himself this way. Coming from a Republican, a member of the party that promotes itself as the responsible one, I find it strange that he's not willing to take responsibility for his actions. He made the choice -- he should deal with the consequences, not look for a 'Get-out-of-jail-free' card from Congress.

In the end, the President is neither showing, nor appealing to, American courage.

Competence
The President has said that if he didn't get this bill, the interrogation program would not be able to continue. Let me parse that out a little bit more clearly. The President is saying that if torture is not in the toolbox, that there is no way any meaningful interrogation can be done. The Government wouldn't know where to start. This is a laughable, all-or-nothing argument. We've been questioning people for a long time; the Military has a lengthy manual on it, which for some time included no torture (there's been a some revising back and forth of late), and it was generally pretty successful. Either the President is admitting to incompetence of a level that should be of concern to everyone, or again, this is not a good faith argument. Even if we take him at face value, do we really believe that as Americans this is the only way we can succeed?

Integrity
I've saved this for last, in part because I wanted to get the drier, more technical arguments out of the way. So let me return to the question I asked above. For me, I can say that it never crossed my mind. In your heart of hearts, in the America of your dreams, would we be torturing people? Would we be skirting the edges of this pit, a pit that we have condemned others for entering? Stalin was known to use a technique called 'The Conveyor' (CID stands for 'cruel, inhumane and degrading'):

Now it appears that sleep deprivation is "only" CID and used on Guantanamo Bay captives. Well, congratulations, comrades! It was exactly this method that the NKVD used to produce those spectacular confessions in Stalin's "show trials" of the 1930s. The henchmen called it "conveyer," when a prisoner was interrogated nonstop for a week or 10 days without a wink of sleep. At the end, the victim would sign any confession without even understanding what he had signed.

CID is deemed necessary for the war on terror. If you can, go read the whole article above. It's by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who suffered torture himself. It's good perspective. As a side note, I'm not going to get into whether torture works or not, but I'd ask you to note the bolded sentence above (my emphasis).

Think about Jefferson for a moment. I am aware of his imperfections and self-contradictions (he was a slave owner). Yet, among our Founding Fathers, he is the one most regularly appropriated by both sides of the political spectrum as ancestor and patron. Having read a few books about him, I don't think that he can honestly be placed in either camp. The simple fact is that the positions of the parties at that time don't map well to today (he was a fiscally conservative Republican who did everything in his power to reduce the size of the Army and Navy, for starters). So why is he so popular? Because of his rhetoric. Read the Declaration of Independence. It is sweeping, majestic, bold, and uplifting. It speaks to the noblest impulses in all of us. It is a document whose sentiment is one that anyone, in any nation, would be proud to own as part of their cultural heritage. Jefferson, in his writings, planted the seed for the idea of American Exceptionalism that forms such a strong core of our own mythology. America does have its own mythology. Gunslinging is our martial art, cowboys are our knights errant, we are an egalitarian meritocracy (aka the American Dream) and a beacon of light to the world, a "shining city on a hill" (a phrase that has come to mean rather more than it did when originally coined).

With that in mind, I ask you, can you honestly say that Jefferson would torture people? Would anyone claim that? It just doesn't register for me, it is completely disconnected from my entire impression of the birth of our nation. I can't square that circle. Who would Jefferson torture? No one. George Washington? No one. The reason for this is simple. Torture is not American. American's. Don't. Torture.

Now, I know that if you look through our history, even recent history, you're going to find some pretty bad things going on. This guy makes an utterly valid point that torture isn't, in fact, such an anomaly. Ok, so we've got some history of it, and I consider that reprehensible as well. The difference is that if this bill goes through, torture will shift from being a shadow policy to an overt, official one. That change is HUGE. Any pretence to adhering to the Geneva Conventions is rendered laughable. Any claim to moral superiority, a defining aspect of America's role in the world for the last few generations, ceded.

Those are practical considerations though, and the reason I have finally been galvanized to write about this issue, of the hundreds that have stirred my outrage over the past few years, is hard to explain. This has touched me at a deep emotional level. I find myself somewhere between rage, horror and despair. Through my head keeps repeating this refrain: "This must not be. This can not be. I am not a torturer. Never in my name!". If this essay has seemed a little dry or dispassionate at times, it is because I can't find the words to properly express the depth of my feelings on this, like a victim of physical trauma who has gone into shock and isn't really feeling the pain. I'm refraining from using four letter words, in order not to seem shrill, but understand that this is a cri de cœur.

Moral reasons aside, here's a scenario that presents a pragmatic reason not to torture. Imagine being identified as a member of a terrorist organization. You are denied the right to a lawyer and questioned forcefully. The US gov't. decides to fly you to Syria (ironically a country that the US has publicly berated for their human rights record), where you are locked in an unlit 3-foot-wide cell known as 'the grave'. You are kept there for months, during which time you are beaten with a cable, threatened with electrocution, and otherwise tortured and intimidated. You don't see the sun for 6 months, and suffer a near nervous breakdown. You sign all sorts of confessions to keep from being tortured (a common failing of torture). Eventually, you get the chance to speak to an official of your country. Four years after your ordeal started, your government starts an inquiry. Eventually, they clear you of any suspicion of terrorist activity.

That is the story of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen. He was arrested in 2002, and cleared only a week or so ago. As I said, this is a purely practical reason not to torture. In the end, for me, it's not a question of practicalities, though. It's a clear, bright line we don't cross, ever. Think about waterboarding, simulated drowning. I myself have a modest fear of drowning. I can't imagine going through this. Imagine a loved one of yours being subjected to torture, physical or psychological. The after-effects of torture, both on the body and mind, linger for years. I could not bear it if this were to happen to someone I love. For me, to turn my back on it as it is practiced on others would be hypocrisy. I'm going to be calling my Representative, my Senators, and the House and Senate Minority leaders to tell them to defeat this bill - by filibuster if necessary. I'd call the House and Senate Majority leaders, but frankly I don't think it would help much. I'm going to tell them, no hyperbole, that I think this is a battle for the soul of the country. I'm going to tell them that I'd rather be killed in a terrorist attack than have agents of the US Government torture in my name. I mean it.

Who would Jefferson torture? No one. Who will I torture? No one. Not in my name. Never. In. My. Name.

UPDATE: I added a link to back up my assertion that these techniques are torture. After WWII, waterboarding by the Japanese was cited as torture.