The Episcopal Record runs Anti-Torture Piece
Rev. Reid Hamilton's opinion piece against toture apeared in The Record, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.
The Record, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, published an editorial by Reid Hamilton that ICPJ helped to get posted. It’s a good article, give it a read…
Torture is a Terrorist Tactic
by Reid Hamilton, Chaplin of Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan
The United States has already had its discussion about the morality of torture, and has long since made its decision: Torture is immoral. Torture is illegal. We already have many laws in place against it. It is now time to enforce them.
A very comprehensive list of international and U.S. laws against torture can be found, ironically enough, in the various memoranda composed by attorneys in the Bush Administration such as Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and Stephen Bradbury, and circulated within the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, the CIA, and other defense and intelligence agencies. For example the “War Crimes Act,” 18 U.S.C. § 2441 (Supp. III 1997) directly incorporates several provisions of international treaties governing the law of war into the federal criminal code, particularly the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Another provision of U.S. law makes torture a federal offense separately from international law. (U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A). Article 93 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits U.S. military personnel from engaging in “cruelty toward, or oppression or maltreatment of” any person subject to their orders.
In a memorandum dated 10 May 2005, then Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury reminded the Senior Deputy General Counsel for the CIA, that:
Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms. The universal repudiation of torture is reflected not only in our criminal law . . . but also in international agreements, in centuries of Anglo-American law . . . and in the longstanding policy of the United States, repeatedly and recently reaffirmed by the President. Consistent with these norms, the President has directed unequivocally that the United States is not to engage in torture.
If I were still a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the United States Army; if I were still a member of the legal staff of the 82d Airborne Division; if I were this very morning to be instructing U.S. paratroopers on the law of war as I have done many times in the past, I could not say it better myself.
It is our participation in the establishment and enforcement of international standards prohibiting torture, our unique recognition of and insistence on the existence of fundamental human rights, and our commitment to the rule of law that has not only driven our own policy decisions (at least until recently), but has (at least until recently) allowed us to insist that our own soldiers and citizens be humanely treated at the hands of other nations.
Unfortunately, lawyers for the Bush Administration shamefully endeavored with all of their skill and training to justify the subversion of the law. They encouraged and allowed the President to be equivocal about torture. Over the course of months from the fall of 2001 until the recent presidential election, these lawyers suggested that the President may unilaterally ignore treaties signed by the United States; that the President has the right to suspend the law in time of war; that international law does not apply, variously, to “enemy combatants” – a term invented by the Bush Administration – to members of Al Quaida, or to Iraqi civilians. Moreover it now appears that some of these memoranda were drafted after U.S. intelligence agents and military personnel had already engaged in illegal torture, and were intended to provide legal cover for their practices.
The Obama administration has done an admirable thing to identify and rescind these memoranda, most of which would have earned a failing grade in the Constitutional Law class of any reputable law school. It is a good thing that many of them have been published, so that the people can see how they have been ill-advised and misled by their own lawyers and high government officials. It is a shame that thus far, only low-level soldiers have been subjected to punishment for the egregious violations of law and conscience, encouraged and indulged in by those whom we elected to office. It is disappointing and indeed frightening that the Obama administration is has thus far resisted any public investigation or examination of the crimes that thus far remain hidden in darkness and secrecy. It is a scandal that Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have vowed to shut down the business of the Senate unless Congress passes a law preventing the release of photographs of prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel.
We are not helpless. We are the citizens of a great democracy. Our national integrity has been violated. Torture is a terrorist tactic. If we do not demand accountability from our elected officials, then we must accept that we are ourselves guilty, and the war on terror is lost.
