THE NATION: Special Issue-Conspiracy to Torture

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Conspiracy to Torture

If the twentieth century has proved anything, it is that no nation, no constitutional system, is immune from the insidious downward human rights spiral signified by torture. In this special issue, The Nation confronts the sweeping moral seriousness of the torture conspiracy and what it will do to America and its democratic institutions. The facts are known: Now is the time to hold the conspirators accountable.



THE NATION
editorial | posted December 8, 2005 (December 26, 2005 issue)
Conspiracy to Torture

Torture is about acts: the blow to the head, the scream in the ear, the scar-free injuries whose diagnosis has become an international medical subspecialty. But torture is also very much about words: the whispered or shouted questions of the interrogator; the muddled confession of the prisoner; the too rarely tested language of laws protecting prisoners from "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment.

If American institutions don't act, prosecutors and parliaments abroad will. Already, kidnappings and renditions have spawned criminal inquiries in Italy, Sweden and Canada, while the EU and Council of Europe investigate the black sites. In many European nations, victims of human rights violations enjoy broad standing to bring legal action--as General Pinochet learned in England. The more information leaks out, the less frivolous is the fantasy of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Attorney General Gonzales and other complicit officials unable to travel to Europe without fear of being served with papers. The Administration may be scornful of international human rights covenants. But in recent death-penalty and gay-rights cases, the Supreme Court majority has taken pains to indicate that international human rights standards do matter in American law, in the noble tradition of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" articulated by the Declaration of Independence.

If the twentieth century proved anything, it is that no nation, no constitutional system, is immune from the downward human rights spiral signified by torture--as Britain, France and Israel, among other nations, learned at great political cost. The purpose of this special issue is to confront the sweeping moral seriousness of the American torture crisis of the twenty-first century. The point is not so much that we are "better than our enemies," as Senator McCain and others have argued, but that our democratic institutions are vulnerable to erosion. The outline of the torture conspiracy is clear, but the full facts need to be exposed and the chain of responsibility definitively established. History will judge the Bush Administration's torture policy in the same harsh light as Jim Crow, McCarthyism and the Japanese-American internment. The conspirators must be held accountable.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/editors

More on torture from THE NATION:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/lewis
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/marks

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