Apr

19

Torture Memos

Filed Under Uncategorized 

The Obama administration released the torture memos yesterday to considerable criticism. The administration also announced that it did not intend to pursue prosecutions against operatives who engaged the practices detailed in the memos. In my opinion they made exactly the right choices.

Releasing the memos continues to put distance between the Obama administration and the criminal actions of the Bush administration. Opting against prosecuting operatives who were acting within legally sanctioned guidelines makes it possible to keep moving forward without abandoning the possibility of legal accountability for those who authorized the torture of detainees.

There can be no mistake that we are talking about torture here. Despite all the euphemisms and qualifications, the interrogation methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration were clearly beyond the bounds of accepted practice; otherwise it would not be necessary to justify them so exhaustively.

The clearest indication of our imminent decent down the slippery slope came when the it was announced the United States government held that enemy combatants captured in the so-called War on Terror were not subject the protections of the Geneva Convention. It would not be necessary to justify removing those protections if those captives weren’t in danger of needing them.

They in fact did need those protections as it turned out and the United States will be paying a large price for it choice to abandon the rule of law in favor of a specious need for expediency. There isn’t anything to be done about that now. We can only make real and honest attempts to correct our mistakes and to acknowledge the tragic consequences that been visited upon some genuinely innocent people.

Obviously there are some genuinely evil people who are in our custody and these people are to be held to account for their activities. This is not in question. But how we go about that and how we treat these people while we impose justice upon says a great deal about ourselves and nothing about them.

There was no decision this administration would make regarding these memos that would be entirely satisfying, but their release and the decision not to pursue prosecutions allows the United States to continue rehabilitating its reputation without engaging in the sort of scapegoating that accompanied the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

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