The harm the U.S. does in rationalizing torture (Globe and Mail)

[struggle4progress]

Two broad legal justifications for torture are now said to be available to the United States in its war on terrorism. The first is the president's "complete authority over the conduct of war." The second is self-defence: creating one harm where it is necessary to avoid a greater harm, even when there is no immediate danger such as a ticking bomb.
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This is frightening for many reasons. It is frightening because it fits so neatly with other legal strategies of the Bush administration. The government has sought to put many of its prisoners in the war on terrorism beyond the reach of the law. At Guantanamo Bay, for instance, inmates are "enemy combatants," with neither the prisoner-of-war protections of the Geneva Conventions nor the due-process protections given accused criminals. They are in a legal black hole. Two U.S. citizens held in U.S. jails without charge or, until recently, access to lawyers or judicial review, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, are in a similar black hole. Maher Arar of Ottawa, shipped out of the United States to Syria under orders of the deputy attorney-general, also fell into the post-Sept.-11 black hole. In that black hole, the concept of human dignity is rendered meaningless.
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This genie cannot easily be put back into the bottle. Abu Ghraib damaged the United States' image in the Middle East, but the insistence on a "right to torture" does far greater harm. If the United States can claim that right, so too can any number of tyrannies, and other democracies under threat of terror.

The prohibition against torture has come to seem an immutable law of civilized societies. Now this law may fall to a vision of necessity. That is a frightening vision on which to build this new century.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040612/ETORTURE12/TPComment/Editorials

[indepat]

1. By your fruit shall ye be known: this seems to beg the question as to

whether we in BushWorld are among the civilized societies whose immutable law prohibits torture, to wit, are we now a civilized society?

[struggle4progress]

2. I am afraid we have entered yet another long dark night of the soul.