…It is scenarios like that, perhaps, that cause some people to think that we need wiretaps without warrants and other infringements of traditional American civil liberties. The possibility that we have homegrown terrorists causes some to think we need to deal with the current terrorist threat differently than we have other security and law enforcement challenges we have faced. It is the fear of another 9/11 that justifies, in some minds, torturing suspected terrorists in camps in legal no-man’s-lands like U.S. military enclaves in Cuba, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
I deeply disagree. Torture and warrantless wiretaps are unnecessary. They also erode the support we need abroad and the unity we need at home to overcome the threat from violent Islamist extremists. Most important, they are steps in the wrong direction, steps a little closer to the horrors that humans can engage in when rights are eroded. Experts have known for decades that torture draws unreliable information from its victims and that other methods have good track records in producing cooperation and information from suspects and prisoners. We know of specific examples where tortured prisoners have provided false information, such as the erroneous report that Iraq trained al Qaeda terrorists in the use of weapons of mass destruction.
The belief that Americans have used torture in Abu Ghraib and other U.S. military camps in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba has convinced many in the Islamic world that we do disrespect Muslims. It has helped some to justify terrorist tactics and support for al Qaeda and similar groups. It has convinced many that we are hypocrites when we talk about human rights and democracy. I have long believed that the U.S. Bill of Rights and the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights are among the few membranes, the thin tissues, that separate humanity from another descent into the kind of world that only a few decades ago saw many millions of people degraded and industrially disposed of in the horror camps of Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union. It is in humanity’s genes and makeup that people can engage in such atrocities. And many people have done so.
We need to hold the line well this side of the police state, far from the torture chamber. Yet the U.S. Justice Department originated a ruling that the only torture that was out of bounds was that which caused pain equivalent to organ failure. Anything else done by Americans was permissible, as long as it was not done in the United States. The Vice President of the United States drove to the Congress to lobby members to permit what he euphemistically called “alternative interrogation techniques.” It is hard to believe. You want to think it’s all a bad dream, but it’s not. You thought America was a force in the world against this sort of thing, not a nation that would actually engage in it. Thankfully, for a while we had John McCain as our conscience. McCain, who was repeatedly tortured, was there to remind us of what it means to be Americans, what it is that we stand for in this world, and who we are not. Unfortunately, he later voted against a legislated ban on waterboarding by the CIA…
People throughout the world knew at one point that the United States stood for something. Even if they disagreed with us on some things, they respected us for our principles. When we criticized others for violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people knew that we had worked hard to overcome our flaws with regard to slavery and racial discrimination. The world knew that it was the government in Washington that fought against those in our country who still tried to violate human rights on the basis of race. It gave us a strength in the world beyond our military might and economic prowess. What we did in violating human rights in the fight against terrorists showed us to the world as hypocrites, and we lost that strength. After 9/11, the United States also abandoned the oldest protection in the Anglo-American legal system, the concept of habeas corpus. This abandonment of legal tradition allows prisoners to be held by U.S. officials indefinitely, without charges, and without any really impartial review of evidence against them.
Congress has been a party to these erosions of our legal system and civil liberties. When finally it forced the administration to amend the relevant laws instead of just ignoring them, it gave the Attorney General decision-making authority in place of judges’ control over wiretaps. Congress further agreed to abandon habeas corpus when it came to some detained terrorist suspects, including those in the United States. The disregard of civil liberties, human rights, international law, privacy rights, and due process clearly and repeatedly demonstrated by the U.S. government after 9/11 has made it almost impossible for the American people to join in a consensus with their Congress and government to do some of the sensible things that should be done to enhance security and fight crime…
