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Detainee challenges show value of values |
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Written by the Editorial Board
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Wednesday, 18 March 2009 |
President Obama’s post-inaugural executive orders will close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility within the year and end the CIA’s once-secret overseas prisons, where both U.S. and Red Cross officials say torture had been taking place. The orders ban such interrogation methods unequivocally, loudly and laudably . . . again.
Taking the path of least resistance when the tension between American values and so-called “Homeland” security was at its highest . . . was how this all began.Torture was already illegal. In 1987, Ronald Regan singed the Convention Against Torture, which requires a member country to “ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.” Correspondingly, a federal statute punishes “whoever…commits or attempts to commit torture” with up to life in prison.
So, how are we, a nation of laws and principles, to proceed with this knowledge of what was done in our name? Though Obama’s changes are admirable, they undo no past transgressions; they merely begin a healing process. Much damage has been done. Opinions about America and its commitment to practical, moral and legal principles must heal or, worse, be cultivated from scratch.
No one is pretending this will be easy. In fact, it had better not be: Taking the path of least resistance when the tension between American values and so-called “Homeland” security was at its highest--choosing a lower vision of a safer nation--was how this all began.
There are many difficult choices the country must now make. Deciding what to do with mistreated detainees, for instance, will present significant legal, moral, and practical problems.
If they are to enter American courts, the evidence against them obtained illegally will usually be inadmissible, and they may be released into society due to a lack of evidence. Yet if they are sent home, they risk being tortured; the Torture Convention makes it illegal for the United States to knowingly enable this, too.
And if they are returned to other countries like Saudi Arabia, Libya, or Pakistan, the detainees may be sent to “religious re-education” for jihadists, which CNN reports is expensive, labor-intensive, and “will never be 100 percent successful.” An unsuccessful re-education attempt, to be clear, is defined as an act of terrorism perpetrated by a jihadist that would have been prevented had they remained in illegal custody.
The likelihood of this situation is sadly increased by each released prisoner calcified by inhuman treatment. Ostensibly, they would be more motivated to commit acts of hateful terrorism, irrespective of the statement made by Obama’s executive orders.
Responsibly carrying out the president’s detainee decisions will be difficult; trying these detainees will try us. In fact, the detainees themselves are really the tip of the proverbial iceberg. From America’s compromises springs a dazzling array of problems. But these moral, legal and practical challenges are our burden. They arise inexorably from the compromises in values America made in the name of safety and mark, perhaps, the strongest reasons not to have compromised in the first place.
[NY Times, Washington Post, Cornell Law, CNN, Front page image by Department of Defense via Wikipedia]
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