An enormously important news article and a coming decision by the Justice Department have made this the month when some important decisions on torture are made by the government and the general public as well. Those decisions may shape America’s direction for a long time to come.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post
An inflection point is a place on a curve where the growth rate flips from positive to negative (or vice versa). Once it is hit the curve will continue its trend, but unless another inflection point is reached it will inevitably turn down (or up). We may be approaching something like that with civil liberties and human rights. This week Mark Danner published the second half of his coverage of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) report on detainee torture at CIA black site prisons, along with the report itself. The ICRC document is sickening, a gruesome catalog of horrors inflicted by us on those in our custody. In his first article Danner noted how the public message was that we needed to “take the gloves off” after 9/11. That was not just White House spin or a slogan for the new product getting rolled out, though – it also constituted the whole debate on torture. It was both inflection and turning point.
There was plenty of evidence evil was being done in our names, but the fundamental dishonesty of our leaders prevented an airing. As Jane Mayer wrote, “[t]he Bush Administration could have openly asked Congress for greater authority, or engaged the public in a discussion of the morality and efficacy of ‘enhanced’ interrogations, but instead it chose a path of tricky legalisms adopted in classified memos.” With Congress being controlled first by Republicans with an authoritarian streak who placed obedience to the president above the law, then by timid and cowardly Democrats who refused to confront a bully (then) or a hyperventilating minority (now) we have seen no action on this vital issue. Since at least December 26, 2002 – the day the Washington Post reported on a black site near Bagram air base – Congress has been grossly negligent on the issue.
We as a people are responsible for our country’s descent into state sponsored torture. We freely elected our leaders and they began these programs in our name. It may be tempting (it certainly is for me) for those of us who object to think: I always opposed torture; I never approved of it or tried to rationalize it; I did not use euphemisms for it; I never tried to deny that it had happened. That is all well and good, but whatever our individual feelings on it we all share the collective responsibility for it. As a country, we did it.
But now we no longer have even that implausible deniability. Probably every country on the face of the earth claims its people enjoy great freedom and that it reveres the rule of law, but asserting it does not make it so. In some countries oligarchs control key industries, bend politicians to their will and suppress dissenting voices – with violence if need be. Other countries promote relatively liberal economic policies but have dismal records on human rights; still others claim a new model of governing that combines impressive economic growth with severe restrictions on civil liberties. We are on a path to join them. That is the inflection point straight ahead. The growth rate has moderated a little but is still negative.
Whether that changes may depend largely on two outcomes, one just beginning and one in process. The former is our public discussion of torture. Danner writes: “We are having, in a ragged way, the debate about ethics and morality in our national security policies that we never had in the days after September 11, when decisions were made in secret by a handful of officials.” We can no longer pretend not to know, and we all will be responsible for what becomes of those policies in the years ahead. We need to demand details, no matter how uncomfortable, and stop letting government hide behind the fearmongering rhetoric of national security, state secrets and classification.
The one in process is the handling of Bush administration documents by president Obama. April 16th is the Justice Department’s deadline for a response on the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for several torture memos. Obama has already declassified some documents, but these ones appear to be explosive. If he lets them see the light of day it may be more than Congress can ignore. The public conversation will intensify as well. It feels like we have arrived at a crucial moment – when the course of our country, and what it means to be an American, will be set for a good time to come. What will our leaders do, and what will we? Will we stretch toward the sunlight or keep looking, slouched, at the ground?
