Political Bloviation

No Torture. No Exceptions

The Washington Monthly sets out to end the debate on torture by presenting a series of short essays from people across the political spectrum on why torture is, in fact, bad. The real tragedy here is that is necessary to make this point in the USA in the 21st century.

Here’s a quote from the essay by Bob Barr (he’s not your typical dirty hippy, liberal peacenik):

This administration has gone beyond even the Bizarro World standard of declaring up to be down or left to be right. Not only is torture not torture, but there exists insufficient clarity even to know what is torture so we can determine whether an interrogation technique is torture or not. While the extreme sophistry and word gamesmanship practiced to a fine art by this administration might make a high school debating coach proud, it does great disservice to the notion that we exist in a society in which there are rules and norms of behavior with clarity and definitiveness and in which government agents as well as the citizenry are held to standards of behavior. This is not something of which we as Americans should be proud, and the use of torture will come back to haunt us in ways this administration apparently either doesn’t realize or simply doesn’t care about.

Kenneth M. Duberstein (former Reagan Chief of Staff) & Richard Armitage (Deputy Sec Def):

We will not win the war on terror merely by being brutal or tough. We must build policies that are first and foremost effective. Torture undermines our effectiveness in this struggle because it debases us. It reduces us to the same brutality as our enemies, and it alienates people around the world who, as General Colin Powell wrote, are “beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”

America must keep itself free and secure by explicitly and unequivocally rejecting torture.

Across its history, America has been many things: a beacon of hope, the arsenal of democracy, a champion of human rights, and a liberator. In this long litany, there is no room for torture. It is not what we are about as a country.

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