By Cliff Montgomery – Apr. 20th, 2013
“Four Republican lawmakers…strongly urged the Obama Administration Saturday to treat the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings as an enemy combatant,” declared The Washington Post today.
Releasing a joint statement, Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Peter King (R-NY) said that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be considered an “enemy combatant,” because trying him through the normal workings of the Justice system “could very well be a national security mistake” that might “severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect.”
Now let’s not kid ourselves. As we’ve seen over the last several years, an ‘interrogation of an enemy combatant’ who has been denied all legal and even basic human rights often degenerates into rank torture or outright coercion.
For all their appeals to rank fears, these lawmakers and others like them maintain one clear idea which serves as the basis for their argument: Human rights and the U.S. Constitution are absurd weaknesses, which must be put aside the moment we become afraid of someone.
We at The American Spark submit that this country’s so-called ‘leaders’ are mistaken. We further submit that a recognition of everyone’s innate human rights – and of the Constitution which was written to enshrine them – are America’s greatest strengths, and not the weaknesses some lawmakers assume them to be.
We argue that a person – no matter what we think of him – is far more apt to work with officials who treat him like a human being than those who work to break him like an animal.
Denying someone his or her essential human rights does not magically make that person speak the truth. It instead turns any discourse into a fruitless battle of wills.
Either innate human dignity will force the individual being questioned to remain quiet for days, weeks or months as the seconds tick away, or they will eventually say anything to stop the questioning and possible acts of torture – a move that has nothing to do with providing the necessary truth which may actually save lives.
Even the Pentagon has admitted the foolishness of denying a person their essential human rights during custody or even during an interrogation.
Several years ago, numerous media reports disclosed that U.S. Forces were abusing detainees held at detention facilities in Iraq – such ‘interrogations’ then also were said to be done for the purpose of obtaining much-needed information quickly, to ‘save American lives’. Members of Congress at that time called on the Pentagon’s office of the Inspector General (IG) to investigate the matter. The IG’s de-classified 2006 evaluation was revealing.
“Various international laws and national treaties govern the treatment of detainees taken during war and other armed hostilities. The Geneva Conventions set the standard for international law to address humanitarian concerns,” stated the IG’s report.
“Overall, the laws and treaties are intended to ensure that detainees taken during armed hostilities are treated humanely,” adds the evaluation from the Pentagon’s Inspector General.
The IG pointed out that the Defense Department’s doctrine on intelligence interrogation “expressly prohibits inhumane treatment and warns that the use of torture by U.S. personnel will bring discredit upon the United States and its armed forces, while undermining domestic and international support for the war effort.”
It had an equally strong message about employing coercive techniques on an interrogation subject.
“Physical or mental torture and coercion revolves around eliminating the source’s free will and are expressly prohibited by GWS [Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field], Article 13, GPW [Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War], Articles 13 and 17, and GC [Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War], Articles 31 and 32.
“Torture is defined as the infliction of intense pain to body or mind to extract a confession or information, or for sadistic pleasure,” stated the Pentagon’s IG.
“Coercion is defined as actions designed to unlawfully induce another to compel an act against one’s will. Examples of coercion include—threatening or implying physical or mental torture to the subject, his family or others to whom he owes loyalty,” added the study.
Lastly, the Defense Department’s IG went out of its way to add that “prohibited techniques are not needed to gain the cooperation of detainees – [in fact] their use leads to unreliable information that may damage subsequent collection efforts. Not only does a detainee under duress provide information simply to stop the pain, but future interrogations will require more coercive, perhaps more dangerous, techniques.”
The message of the Pentagon’s Inspector General seems clear: Those who would deny a person under interrogation his natural and constitutional rights are not eliminating terrorism, but instead are driving others to radical terrorist philosophies and counter-attacks in the hope of providing a retaliation.
American lawmakers have had their “War on Terrorism” for well over a decade. It’s clear terrorism has not been stopped. If anything, such actions as the false war in Iraq – based on ‘evidence’ so shoddy and flimsy that no logical person could take it seriously – the acts of torture on Iraqi detainees and the drone bombings throughout the Arab world have driven more people to violent radicalism than any number of YouTube videos.
If one still doubts this truth, consider the constant battle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. They’ve been attacking and countering one another for about 100 years now – 96 years, to be precise. Every week one hears that Israeli forces have moved into some Palestinian territory and bulldozed a number of homes, or that some Palestinian terrorist bomber has killed an Israeli child.
But in all that time, has a single one of these actions finally stopped hostilities? Or have they instead just fueled new wars?
We’re afraid our lawmakers will have to admit that, for once, violence is not the solution to all social ills. It is in fact the problem.
They’re going to have admit that not every problem can be jailed, humiliated, tortured, shot, raped and destroyed into silent submission. For once, they’re going to have to actually think their way out of a real mess.
And if they can’t do it, we citizens around the world – American, Asian, Israeli, Arab – will have to replace them and start doing the thinking for ourselves. God knows we can’t do much worse.
