Center for International Policy

How Did We Come to This?

By Wayne S. Smith

In the past, the United States was regarded as a leading champion of human rights. Any instance in which the U.S. did not fully support those rights were seen as exceptions to the rule. Even during World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, it was the policy of the U.S. to uphold the Geneva Conventions and to treat prisoners accordingly.

How have we fallen so far so fast? International polls now show that even among our closest allies, the U.S. is seen not as a defender but as a major violator of human rights. And no wonder, as we see the horrifying pictures coming out of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq – laughing American soldiers standing over piles of naked, abused prisoners – and hear the testimony of abuses at Bagram prison in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. And clearly, these were not isolated incidents; rather, they were part of an authorized pattern.

And authorized at the highest levels. There was, for example, the 56-page memo dated March 6, 2003, written by Pentagon lawyers for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. It insisted that the president had “complete authority over the conduct of the war,” and that legal prohibitions against torture “must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander and chief authority.”

Astonishing! The Pentagon lawyers are clearly asserting that the President can do as he wishes in conducting the war, even to ordering the torture of prisoners!

But, it will be said, the President has stated over and over again that “we do not torture prisoners.”
Yes, but it all depends on one’s definition of torture. And here we turn to a 50-page Justice Department memo dated August 1, 2002 – doubtless co-authored by Alberto Gonzalez. It insisted that the Geneva Conventions against torture did not apply to “unlawful combatants” captured during the war on terrorism. It also stated that anti-torture prohibitions in various other international conventions might well not apply and that the acts themselves might not really constitute torture. “Certain acts may be cruel, inhuman or degrading,” the memo stated, “but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within [the] proscription of torture.”

In other words, according to the Justice Department lawyers, if you’re still breathing, then you haven’t been tortured!

Not even in my most pessimistic moments had I expected to read such inhumane assertions in Justice and Defense Department documents. But there they are. These memos and other like them circulated widely and set the stage for what happened at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, at Guantanamo, and at the many secret CIA prisons scattered around the world where torture of prisoners was the norm. And responsibility for what happened in these hell-holes goes all the way to the top of our government.

Wayne S. Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. and an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.