I'll never stop demanding accountability and justice [View All]

[Solly Mack]

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:Human dignity denied -Torture and accountability in the ‘war on terror’


I. A familiar path to torture

Apologists for torture generally concentrate on the classical argument of expediency: the authorities are obliged to defeat terrorists or insurgents who have put innocent lives at risk and who endanger both civil society and the state itself… The accumulated evidence also gives a clear picture of the ‘preconditions’ for torture… Incommunicado detention, secret detention and ‘disappearance’ increase the latitude of security agents over the lives and well-being of people in custody.

Amnesty International, Torture in the Eighties, 1984


The torture and ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees by US agents in Abu Ghraib prison was – due to a failure of human rights leadership at the highest levels of government – sadly predictable.


"It is a recurring theme in history", said a senior United Kingdom (UK) judge in a criticism of US "war on terror" detentions, "that in times of war, armed conflict, or perceived national danger, even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis".(7) Certainly, a glimpse at the history of torture in the 20th century was enough to ring alarm bells following the crime against humanity that was committed in the USA on 11 September 2001. The situation contained some classic ingredients that would demand principled leadership if human rights were not to suffer in the wake of such an atrocity. In the mix was an elusive, ill-defined and demonized enemy; shortcomings in intelligence-gathering; an official interpretation of the situation as new, unique and requiring special measures; and an apocalyptic picture painted by government of a stark moral choice between "good and evil" faced by society and wider "civilization".

A war mentality without commitment to the laws of war

Prior to 11 September 2001, the USA had "dealt with attacks as primarily a law enforcement matter".(16) This approach changed after the atrocities of that day. President Bush has said he decided that "we were going to war" the moment he heard that airliners had been crashed into the World Trade Center,(17) and early that afternoon he opened a video teleconference meeting with his principal advisers with the words "we’re at war".(18) He has characterized the ensuing "war on terror" as a "monumental struggle of good versus evil".(19) The President has maintained this tone, including in speeches to military audiences in his role as Commander-in-Chief.(20)




A war mentality is dangerous for human rights when a government extends the war framework to cover areas that should appropriately be addressed by law enforcement measures, and even then claims that existing laws of war do not cover this "new paradigm". Amnesty International does not believe that the so-called "war on terror" mandates a new legal framework. The territories and the circumstances in which the confrontation with al-Qa’ida or others actually takes place determine the applicable legal regime, within the existing framework of international human rights and humanitarian law. The US administration’s refusal to recognize this has fed its willingness to countenance the ill-treatment of detainees in the "war on terror".(21)


More:
Old arguments to justify torture: the concept of ‘necessity’
Not just a few ‘bad apples’

II. Human dignity denied: torture or ill-treatment of the ‘other’

Interrogation techniques with a discriminatory resonance
From stripping to sexual assault

III. Coercive interrogations and international law

Torture and ill-treatment as international crimes

IV. Human rights: the route to security, not the obstacle to it

I can't relegate the last 7 years to "the past" - some time so long ago that justice can no longer be truly achieved. As if we are helpless to do anything about it. I can't pretend the past 7 years were just some "crazy time" in America. As if what is happening is some sort of aberration never to be repeated again because somehow we know better now. War crimes were committed with the sanction and blessing of government. Intentionally. Methodically. Systemically.


I'll never stop. It's not in me.