Why We Shouldn't Torture

Via Crooks and Liars

Last night Bill O'Reilly unleashed one of his patented Falafel Jihads against the ole-time liberal-hater's favorite, the ACLU, for having had the audacity not only to sue to have those photos of detainee abuse released, but to have actually won in court.

For that, O'Reilly last night flatly accused the ACLU of setting out to harm the nation, and in fact being solely motivated by the desire to hold the country up to humiliation and expose our soldiers to harm. Seriously. Of course, he produces nary a scintilla of evidence to buttress his claims, but then, he's Bill O'Reilly. He doesn't have to.

What's clearly never occurred to O'Reilly is the reality that what he's looking at is one of the very pragmatic and practical reasons American forces have historically eschewed torture: Indulging it not only gives our enemies a rationale to employ it on our own soldiers when captured, but in fact motivates them to capture our soldiers solely for the purpose of retaliatory torture.

...one of the little-observed but longstanding and overwhelming ethical reasons to oppose any kind of torture for prisoners, and has been all along, ever since it was outlawed internationally and nationally [is]: that condoning any kind of abuse provides a pretext for our enemies to do the same, or worse, to American prisoners held abroad.

Moreover, the inevitable Arab anger over the photos further demonstrates know[ledge] that torturing prisoners makes us less safe -- because, as the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate indicated, these actions provide a profound motivation for radicalizing young Muslims. Another study, as Fox recently reported, found a concrete connection between the Abu Ghraib torture photos and the recruitment of suicide bombers in Iraq.

No one wants to put American soldiers deeper in harm's way. But Bill O'Reilly needs to be confronted with the cold fact that it wasn't the actions of the ACLU that put them in that position -- it was the profoundly unwise policy choices of the Bush administration, and its many, many apologists for instituting a torture regime.

Torture changes who we are.

From the Village Voice:

Dark Secrets at the Front

Prisoners and interrogators are both brutalized in a war that changes who we are.

by Nat Hentoff

May 30th, 2007 11:27 AM

In February 2006, then–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that our wars against terrorism "could last for decades." Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, he said of the multiplying enemy: "Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs."

With a seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers in Iraq, the enemy certainly hasn't changed its way of life. However—as the world has witnessed—there's plenty of evidence that we've changed ours—namely, in America's professed values about how we treat our prisoners, euphemistically marginalized as "detainees."

On May 7 of this year, General David Petraeus—now commanding our "surge" in Iraq, emphasized: "It's time to adhere to American values. We must not sink to the level of our enemies."

Does General Petraeus think we're sinking to the level of our enemies with regard to interrogation of prisoners? Are there more than just a 'few bad apples" at Abu Ghraib?

What caused the new alarm by General Petraeus about sinking to the level of the enemy is a startling official report from the Office of the Surgeon General, United States Army Medical Command:

Less than half of other soldiers and Marines (in Iraq) believed that non- combatants should be treated with dignity and respect and well over a third believed that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow team member .

About ten percent of soldiers and Marines reported mistreating an Iraqi non-combatant when it wasn't necessary . . . Less than half of the soldiers and Marines would report a team member for unethical behavior . . .

You can read Nat Hentoff's full report here.

Abu Ghraib: Not just a case of bad apples over there.
photo: US Army Sgt. Sara Wood defenselink.mil