Torture is a big topic these days in the American political conversation. Senator John McCain has brought forward a proposal to unambiguously disavow all methods of interrogation deemed to be “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” by any agent of the United States, anywhere in the world. The White House has responded by shouting, “We do not torture!” while working behind the scenes to secure an exemption for the CIA and trying to deflect attention to the Washington Post’s disclosure of a network of secret prisons, some in former Soviet Bloc countries in Eastern Europe now “free” democracies. Throughout it all, the White House and its apologists, devout in their faith that keeping American free from spectral threat of Terror is a mandate for which the ends really do justify the means, insist that we must not make it easier for “our enemies”. To their way of thinking, as long as no new 9/11-like attacks happen, they have succeeded in defending America.
In this conversation, two arguments the White House wishes to keep separate and unconnected are nonetheless deeply interconnected. The first is over the use of techniques of interrogation that some call torture and some simply call effective, and second concerns the creation of secret detention centers and the practice of detaining individuals outside the bounds of the law. They are, at their foundations, asking the same question: “Is it possible to defend a democratic republic with a free-market economy without sacrificing some of the ideals of democratic liberty or market freedom?” The White House has, by their actions, answered with a resounding, “No.”
Whether or not you believe all the possible misdeeds attributed by the political opponents of the Bush administration, they have acted without circumspection towards the protection of the basic principles of democratic liberty and market freedom in their reaction to the September 11th attacks. The persistence of questions about the properness of Camp X-Ray and the status of the detainees there, the justification of the Iraq invasion, the scope of responsibility at Abu Ghraib, the application and duration of USA Patriot Act, and the readiness of the government to respond to a new terrorist attack of the scale of September 11th cling to the administration despite their best efforts to keep the subject changed. These questions, whether or not they are ever answered, are evidence of the failure by the Administration to act without pause to defend America without sacrificing the ideals of America.
On the topic of torture, the White House once again is trying to change the subject. An attempt has been made to compare the techniques of interrogation used by the intelligence community to those used by the military to train recruits and active duty candidates for special operations units. This is a fallacious argument because a prisoner cannot ‘quit,’ something that the recruits and candidates for elite units always retain. Furthermore, no training or selection program within the DoD is permitted to use physical assault as a training aide. The use of sleep deprivation, limited access to food, severe physical and emotional stress as a training aide, like in the Marine Corps’ Crucible transformation event in Recruit Training, or as part of a selection method, such as the rigorous extended evaluations of candidates to the Navy’s SEAL teams or the Army’s Ranger and Special Forces units is always conducted with substantial openness to accountability, truthfulness regarding the efficacy of the particular programs, and with safeguards made obvious to the individuals subjected to the stress. This is not the case when a covert operative steps into a room with an extra-legal detainee in a secret prison overseas.
In the case of the CIA leak about the secret prisons, an attempt has been made to equate it to the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s status as a covert operative. This is an equivocation. The existence of spies, while sometimes uncomfortable, is a necessary and accepted fact in the scheme of the United States. The creation, administration, and population of secret prisons with individuals who are disappeared by the U. S. Government outside the legal landscape of the U. S. Code, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or International Law is not. To advance an argument to the contrary is absurd and contemptuous.
Whether you believe that the Plame disclosure is negligent or intentional, there is no public good served. The existence of spies is well known, and the disclosure principally involves the particular operative, her network, and general methods revealed by the specific disclosure. The prisons, on the other hand, are squarely in the domain of things that are classified to avoid scrutiny, and the public good is served by their disclosure. The existence of secret prisons must remain a secret not to protect the prisoners, not to hide the fact that the United States seizes suspected terrorists or that those prisoners provide information under interrogation, but to shield the prison keepers from the constraints of the legal and judicial system and the view of the public. The oft-uttered defense of secret prisons is to draw an analogy to the sausage factory – means best ignored if you desire to enjoy the ends.
By keeping them, and actions and policies like them, secret the government is choosing to pursue worthy ends by repugnant means. If the prison disclosure turns out to be factual, then we will have found out, once again, that the President does not believe that America can win a war against terrorists without ceding some of what makes America worth attacking in the first place. These actions the Executive Branch has undertaken presume an authority to act, but they constitute a class of deeds unequivocally unacceptable to be done in the name of the American People.