Waterboarding
We did it and would do it again: Bush
By
Max J. Castro
It
is official: The United States has admitted the use of the torture
technique known as waterboarding on at least three detainees.
Incredibly,
that is not the most shocking revelation to come out of last week’s
statements on the subject by the Attorney General, the Director of
the CIA, and the White House. That dishonor goes to a statement from
the White House declaring that waterboarding is legal and that the
President might authorize its use in the future.
The
Bush administration has done enormous damage around the world. The
war in Iraq, illegal under international law, has resulted in the
death of at least tens or more likely hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
and almost 4,000 Americans. The toll in wounded is much greater.
We
did it and would do it again: Bush
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
It
is official: The United States has admitted the use of the torture
technique known as waterboarding on at least three detainees.
Incredibly,
that is not the most shocking revelation to come out of last week’s
statements on the subject by the Attorney General, the Director of
the CIA, and the White House. That dishonor goes to a statement from
the White House declaring that waterboarding is legal and that the
President might authorize its use in the future.
The
Bush administration has done enormous damage around the world. The
war in Iraq, illegal under international law, has resulted in the
death of at least tens or more likely hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
and almost 4,000 Americans. The toll in wounded is much greater. The
administration’s stubborn opposition to implementing effective
measures against global warming has retarded the international
response to one of the gravest threats facing humanity in the coming
decades. The list of items could go on for several pages.
For
all that, it is on his own country that Bush has inflicted the
greatest harm, beginning with an economically ruinous war the cost of
which will be with us for decades and a domestic policy that has hurt
the vast majority and benefited only the most privileged.
Yet
the most devastating and lasting injury that Bush has perpetrated on
his own country has been moral, and here nothing is worse that the
avowed use and defiant defense of torture exemplified in last week’s
statements by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney defending
waterboarding.
In
admitting the use of torture, the Bush administration has confirmed
the worst accusations leveled against the United States by its
harshest international critics. By insisting on the prerogative of
using torture in the future, Bush once again gives evidence of
appalling arrogance. While even the CIA Director has expressed doubts
about the legality of waterboarding and the Attorney General admitted
he might think waterboarding is torture if it were applied to him,
Bush and Cheney have no qualms about the use of a technique that has
been considered torture since the Middle Ages.
In
order to justify the Iraq war, the Bush administration “fixed the
intelligence around the policy,” to paraphrase the famous Downing
Street memo. Following the same procedure, in order to justify its
use of torture and guarantee impunity to those who ordered it and
perpetrated it, the administration, through its Justice Department,
fixed the law around the policy. It did so by issuing twisted legal
interpretations redefining torture. Then it nominated for Attorney
General one Michael Mukasey, who understood and accepted the
administration’s legal trickery. It is no wonder then that Mukasey
now refuses to launch an investigation into the use of waterboarding
arguing that it was legal at the time it was carried out and that the
Justice Department cannot investigate acts that it itself declared to
be lawful.
But
what Congress wants to know is who declared waterboarding legal and
how did the Justice Department arrive at that result. Mukasey’s
obfuscations are an attempt to preempt an investigation that would
show that the absurd legal reasoning used to declare waterboarding
and other forms of torture and abuse legal was nothing but an attempt
to fix the law around a policy preordained by the White House.
This
travesty may satisfy those who think that anything should go in the
“Global War on Terror.” But it is morally repugnant to the
majority of Americans and to people around the world. Indeed, on
February 8, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour
said waterboarding falls under the prohibition of torture and should
be prosecuted. “There are several precedents worldwide of states
exercising their universal jurisdiction … to enforce the torture
convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of
these avenues of redress," Barbour told a press conference in
Mexico City. The implication is clear. Some top Bush administration
officials may enjoy impunity in the United States but they may have
to curtail their travel abroad or face the prospect of prosecution as
torturers.
The
one silver lining in this moral catastrophe for the United States is
that the practice of waterboarding will not endure after Bush leaves
the White House. The Republican candidates that supported the use of
waterboarding, including Mitt Romney, have all been eliminated. The
remaining candidates from both parties — McCain, Clinton, and Obama
— all have repudiated waterboarding.
Yet
the next president must do much more to reclaim the honor of the
United States than simply stop the practice of torture and say “never
again.” It is not enough, to paraphrase Barack Obama, to get away
from the use of torture; it is necessary to renounce the mindset that
got the United States in the business of torture in the first place.
Doing that will require a bold and thorough rethinking of U.S.
values, policies, and priorities in its dealing with the rest of the
world.
