29 July 2010
By Jacob G. Hornberger I wonder what torture-memo attorneys John Yoo and
Jay Bybee are thinking regarding the report of a U.S.
sailor who was apparently taken captive by the Taliban
yesterday. Time will tell whether the sailor who was
killed with him was actually the lucky one. Would the Taliban torture the guy? It wouldn’t
surprise anyone, but one thing is certain: the U.S.
government unfortunately has no moral standing
whatsoever to demand proper treatment of the soldier,
given its own position and its own track record
regarding torture and abuse. Suppose, for example, the Taliban decides to
waterboard that sailor 183 times. From what people
say, being waterboarding even once would be a
horrifying experience, much less 183 times. How would U.S. officials respond if the Taliban
began doing that to that American sailor? Could they
object to and condemn the Taliban’s repeated
waterboarding of him? Well, they could but likely much of the world would
just shake their heads in dismay over such arrogance
and audaciousness. After all, don’t forget that that’s
the number of times that U.S. personnel waterboarded
accused terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. How would U.S. officials, with straight faces,
claim to have moral standing to object to the
waterboarding of a U.S. sailor 183 times when they
continue to defend their own waterboarding activities?
Indeed, how could U.S. officials even claim that
the Taliban was torturing the sailor through repeated
waterboarding when they’ve denied that waterboarding
even constitutes torture? Or consider all the things that were done by U.S.
forces to people held captive at Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq. You’ll recall that Abu Ghraib was the infamous
prison at which Saddam Hussein tortured Iraqis. It’s
also the prison at which U.S. military personnel and
CIA agents tortured, sexually abused, raped, beat, and
even executed Iraqis. And don’t forget: None of the
victims at Abu Ghraib had ever attacked the United
States or even threatened to do so. All them, along
with their government, were entirely innocent of the
9/11 attacks. Or consider the things that U.S. personnel have
done to prisoners held at the U.S. military’s prison
camp at Guantanamo Bay. Or the things that have been
done at all those secret CIA prisons around the world.
What moral standing would the U.S. government have
in calling on the Taliban to treat that U.S. sailor in
a proper manner? Answer: None. Of course, torture should be condemned simply as a
matter of morality. It’s wrong, and that’s all there
is to it. But secondarily is the utilitarian argument:
It doesn’t work and ends up producing unreliable
information. It also opens the door to the torture,
abuse, and mistreatment of U.S. servicemen when
they’re taken captive, something that that U.S. sailor
might now discover. Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
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