Nor, Apparently, Do Our "Moral Values"

Alberto Gonzales has asserted to the Senate committee weighing his nomination to be attorney general that there's a legal rationale for harsh treatment of foreign prisoners by U.S. forces.

In more than 200 pages of written responses to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who plan to vote Wednesday on his nomination, Gonzales told senators that laws and treaties prohibit torture by any U.S. agent without exception.

But he said the Convention Against Torture treaty, as ratified by the Senate, doesn't prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" tactics on non-U.S. citizens who are captured abroad, in Iraq or elsewhere.

Furthermore,

He warned that any public discussion about interrogation tactics would help al-Qaida terrorists by giving them "a road map" of what to expect when captured.

Er, pardoning my ignorance, but, isn't that the point?

Essentially, Gonzales (and the Bush Administration at large) is arguing that "terrorists" (that is to say, any persons we choose to label as "terrorists") are sub-human, and therefore not deserving of human rights.

So, "Security Detainees" in Iraq (something on the order of 70% of whom are not guilty even of the "crime" of resisting the U.S. occupation) can be tortured at will -- so long as we define any person we plan to torture as a "terrorist" and so long as we define our activities as something other than "torture" (particularly easy to do when the Attorney General refuses "to be drawn into a discussion of tactics that might constitute torture").

Same goes for the Guantanamo detainees: they're terrorists, we don't engage in torture. Q.E.D..

This type of practice is more less the very definition of "barbarism". But what more could we expect from a country that could murder four million Indochinese for the sake of proving to the world its "credibility" as a world hegemon?

Nevertheless, one can't help wonder (again) just how, in this light, the Administration expects that captured Americans shall be treated?

Or, at a further remove, just how such practices (and the even more barbaric practice of high-altitude bombing, and the leveling of whole cities) are supposed to reduce the likelihood of "asymmetric" responses (by the weak) and the establishment of similar "doctrines" (by the powerful)?

As a practical matter, that is -- never minding (for the sake of argument) the hypocrisy and immorality of the "War On Terror" and its associated "battles".

Posted by Eddie Tews at January 26, 2005 02:19 PM