by Edward
The Economist has published an editorial (with such a strong title it bears repeating: "How to lose friends and alienate people: The Bush administration's approach to torture beggars belief") denouncing the Bush administration's nebulous-at-best stance on torure. It should be required reading in the ethics classes the President recently ordered his staff to take. It begins by rehashing the talking points and Orwellian declarations you know so well by now ("We won't confirm that story about secret prisons, but we will assure you we're not torturing people in them" and “We do not torture...[but I'll veto any bill that attempts to prevent me from doing so"]), but then it goes one step further and explains why this is something every American deserves to be angry at the President for:
If the pragmatic gains in terms of information yielded [from torture] are dubious, the loss to America in terms of public opinion are clear and horrifically large. Abu Ghraib was a gift to the insurgency in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay and its dubious military commissions, now being examined by the Supreme Court, have acted as recruiting sergeants for al-Qaeda around the world. In the cold war, America championed the Helsinki human-rights accords. This time, the world's most magnificent democracy is struggling against vile terrorists who thought nothing of slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians—and yet the administration has somehow contrived to turn America's own human-rights record into a subject of legitimate debate.
Mr Bush would rightly point out that anti-Americanism is to blame for some of the opprobrium heaped on his country. But why encourage it so cavalierly and in such an unAmerican way? Nearly two years after Abu Ghraib, the world is still waiting for a clear statement of America's principles on the treatment of detainees. Mr McCain says he will keep on adding his amendment to different bills until Mr Bush signs one of them. Every enemy of terrorism should hope he does so soon. [emphasis mine]
In other words, forget whether or not torture gets results. Forget what it makes us that some of us [in comments, not post] blatantly support torture. Forget what it makes us that our so-called leaders are more concerned about leaks than they are secret prisons. Forget whether we're heading toward our very own home-grown tyranny (although I think when a nation can simply declare someone an enemy combatant, have them disappear into a system of secret prisons, and then strip them of any right to a petition of habeas corpus, it walks and talks enough like tyranny to call it that). Focus instead on this point: Bush's actions are arguably aiding and abetting the enemy. By not sending a crystal clear message that we don't torture people (and I'm sorry, but if his word is no longer good enough to convince a majority of Americans, then suggesting his word should convince the world's potential terrorists is naivety aspiring to idiocy), by not stepping out ahead of McCain and demanding that Congress pass that bill immediately, he's arguably assisting the terrorists' recruiting efforts.
If, as we're told again and again, this is a war of ideas and values, then there's no room for this sort of misstep. Forget whether Bush and Cheney's personal definitions allow them to baldly declare that we don't "torture"; through sheer stubbornness, one must assume, they're undoing hundreds of years' worth of human rights advances right before the entire world's collective eyes. The civilized world is dumbfounded. The terrorists' recruiters are delighted. And increasingly the citizens of the United States are being shamed by this incomprehensible, treacherous policy.
Yep.
Posted by: Frank | November 12, 2005 at 12:39 AM
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times has decided that what the world needs is more torture apologetics. (Summary: the more torture is decried, the more "heroic" it becomes to torture.)
Posted by: Delicious Pundit | November 12, 2005 at 12:47 AM
Well, we will just see in time. There were plenty of people who considered Reagan to be a terrible human rights abuser, but I would guess that currently that number is less than the population of Poland, who by and large think he was a champion of freedom and human rights.
Posted by: DaveC | November 12, 2005 at 01:40 AM
I wrote a more statistical comment to DaveC, but it seems to have vanished.
The difference between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, is that while I doubt anyone's really convinced that Reagan didn't know that his administration was funding terrorism with illegal arms sales to Iran (or that Saddam Hussein was a dictator who was torturing people and filling mass graves - Reagan removed Iraq from the "terrorist nations" list for purely business reasons, not because Iraq's human rights record had improved) - nevertheless, when the illegal arms sales for the purpose of funding terrorism went public, Reagan fired Oliver North.
Bush would have hung on to him.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | November 12, 2005 at 04:03 AM
There were plenty of people who considered Reagan to be a terrible human rights abuser
Was it ever any more than the population of Poland?
GWB can get to this glorious future a lot faster if he endorses the legislation that does no more than codify what ought to be the policy of someone interested spreading freedom.
Posted by: CharleyCarp | November 12, 2005 at 08:37 AM
GWB can get to this glorious future a lot faster if he endorses the legislation that does no more than codify what ought to be the policy of someone interested spreading freedom.
It never ceases to amaze me how much someone who so loves the rhetoric of hard work, sacrifice, and spreading freedom, seems to hellbent on trying to avoid all three.
Posted by: Anarch | November 12, 2005 at 09:54 AM
"There were plenty of people who considered Reagan to be a terrible human rights abuser...."
I don't know anyone who thinks or accused Ronald Reagan of either personally abusing human rights, or personally commanding U.S. forces to engage in human rights abuses.
I do know plenty of people who observe that he was quite indifferent, in terms of either actions taken, or opinions recorded, to the death squads of the various Central and South American regimes he backed. I'm really fairly sure that the dead nuns aren't concerned about the opinions of free Poles, and neither are tens of thousands of tortured El Salvadorans, Guatamalans, Nicaraguans, Argentinians, Colombians, and so on. Why don't they count, too, DaveC?
Robert Parry is, to be sure, impassioned in being anti-Reagan, but generally tends to get his figures right:
I'm quite familiar with the regime of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt; it was one of the most appalling in the long and sordid history of Central American slaughterers.Does Poland make up for our support for him any more than our support for him and his ilk discredits our support for freedom in Eastern Europe? Does or should the U.S. only get credit for its good, and not for its wrong choices, any more than it should get blame only for its bad and not for its right choices?
Is one half of the truth the truth, any direction?
Posted by: Gary Farber | November 12, 2005 at 10:07 AM
For another approach, try this on El Salvador, DaveC.
Posted by: Gary Farber | November 12, 2005 at 10:09 AM
Does or should the U.S. only get credit for its good, and not for its wrong choices, any more than it should get blame only for its bad and not for its right choices?
The United States enjoys (or at least it has until the Bush Doctrine) a universally admired stand on human rights overall. It's a big ugly messy world, and so there will be bad apples, but generally speaking the US was able to compare its record with that of any other nation on earth and be proud of the conclusions drawn. That distinction is slipping away. Actually, Bush is smashing it to pieces.
Posted by: Edward | November 12, 2005 at 10:12 AM
For those who believe in the Bush warmongering approach for spreading freedom and democracy, hopefully they will at some point grasp that it in fact is causing us to lose our uniqueness as a champion of human rights. You just don't get to mix aggressive wars and being a champion of freedom and democracy.
Rather than spreading freedom and democracy, we have been sowing anger and hatred for our country. We have brought elections to Iraq, but somehow have also ended up being universally loathed in that country.
So DaveC, we won't have to wait to see what the locals think of the US efforts in Iraq.
Posted by: dmbeaster | November 12, 2005 at 11:53 AM
How are the Poles feeling about the US now that we're secretly holding and abusing prisoners in former Soviet facilities in Eastern Europe, possibly including Poland? That's the worst symbolism I've seen since the idea of reviving Abu Ghraib as an "interrogation" facility.
Posted by: KCinDC | November 12, 2005 at 12:25 PM
This is strictly anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth, but...I've been to Poland. Most of the Poles I met were downright sarcastic about Reagan. They seemed to think that their improved economic and political lot was due more to their own efforts and local leaders like Lech Walesa than anything the Great Anti-communist Crusader did. They'd also caught on that the invisible hand of capitalism doesn't solve all your problems, whatever Reagan's propoganda implied. Of course, this might say more about who I happened to meet than about what the average Pole (whoever she might be) thinks.
Posted by: dianne | November 12, 2005 at 12:42 PM
"You just don't get to mix aggressive wars and being a champion of freedom and democracy."
Not unless you succeed, anyway.
Posted by: Gary Farber | November 12, 2005 at 02:09 PM
dianne, of course. Walesa and co. were truly putting their lives on the line. They are the true heroes of the crumbling of the East European bloc. Americans like to take credit for everything, like a clueless middle manager.
The locals have a finely tuned bullshit detector. Living under an authoritarian regime makes that a necessity.
While Bush is starting to sound more and more like Andropov or others of the undead (Soviet propaganda was all about spreading Freedom and True Democracy too), he still lacks the raw power to enforce his created reality on us. Blackwater and Sen. Graham are eagerly trying to fix that.
Posted by: Alopex Lagopus | November 12, 2005 at 02:28 PM
They'd also caught on that the invisible hand of capitalism doesn't solve all your problems, whatever Reagan's propoganda implied. Of course, this might say more about who I happened to meet than about what the average Pole (whoever she might be) thinks.
They voted in large amounts for former communists after Walesa's first term...
Posted by: dutchmarbel | November 12, 2005 at 06:07 PM
Edward, I don't really see how your 10:12 post responds in any substantive way to what Gary Farber said. The US deserves credit for its stand for human rights in Poland and blame for its support of genocidal killers in Guatemala. What our "reputation" might have been probably depends on who you ask and what they know. The notion that we had a universally respected record on human rights is um, implausible-- I suspect that people in Latin America probably see Bush's policies as a more open embrace of torture rather than something completely unprecedented.
As for comparing us to other countries, I doubt we're much better or worse than other democracies. It's setting the bar awfully darn low anyway.
I agree with your criticism of Bush, of course. Bad as the US has sometimes been, Bush is doing his best to make us considerably worse.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | November 12, 2005 at 10:41 PM
"As for comparing us to other countries, I doubt we're much better or worse than other democracies."
I'm appalled, myself, at the record of Swedish covert interventions around the world during the last half of the 20th century.
They were very covert, to be sure.
:-)
(Seriously, a case can be made, though, for morally faulting some Swedish (or whomever) stances for other reasons; countries don't have equally parallel circumstances any more than people do, and nobody is perfect; on the other hand, there's considerable difference on the scale between many.)
Posted by: Gary Farber | November 12, 2005 at 10:58 PM
Perhaps the headline here should be "Even The Economist admits that the U.S. human rights record is now a matter of legitimate debate." You wouldn't expect them to arrive at that conclusion quickly.
Posted by: Matt Weiner | November 13, 2005 at 01:22 AM