It seems like many of President Barack Obama’s actions since his inauguration have raised controversy, but none were as sensitive and appealing to our society’s morals as the recent release of the Office of Legal Counsel memos pertaining to the questionable methods of interrogation used by CIA agents on terrorist suspects from 2000 to 2005.
So far the main focus was on whether these methods should have been used at all and whether some agents abused their authority to exceed the permitted physical intensity of these methods; however, a review of the memos, which, in essence, served as a legal advice to President George W. Bush’s inquiries, reveals something far more disturbing and repellent then the very thought of the methods themselves.
One memo, by Alberto Gonzales, the Bush administration’s legal counsel, explores the legal validity of war conduct conventions with regards to the treatment of Al-Qaeda prisoners. In the memo, Gonzales details why the American War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions do not apply to these detainees and lists all the loopholes that, literally, exempt the United States’ government from attending to these prisoners’ human rights.
Putting aside the debatable necessity of these “harsh interrogation techniques,” as the memos describe them, it seems like high ranking officials of the Bush administration took extreme precautionary measures to ensure that they would not be held accountable in a court of law.
These measures did not, however, prevent the administration, or the CIA, from being held accountable in a moral court and in the public’s eye. The premeditative act of knowingly breaking international rules of proper war conduct and, moreover, scheming to make sure it was legally protected, reflect badly on the previous administration but could, perhaps, be understandable in light of the chaotic state of mind, with which 9/11 had left the country.
Even more disturbing than searching for legal leeway to inflict pain for retrieval of information, though, is exactly how “harsh” the interrogation methods were allowed to be. From the memos, it looks as if the bar is excruciatingly high.
“Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” wrote Gonzales to Bush in a 2002 memo.
I suppose anything under this brutal threshold is fair game then.
The release of the memos, said President Barack Obama in a White House statement, was permitted now because the use of the methods was already unofficially released to the public and because he had already outlawed them.
“This is a time for reflection, not retribution,” Obama said and asserted that the identity of CIA agents who practiced the methods in question will remain classified and legally immune.
Obviously there was something dubious about these interrogation methods or else they would not have been annulled and would not have raised such public frenzy, so where were these agents’ personal moral standards and why should they be protected only because they were just following orders?
Does anyone else sees the obvious resemblance to the misconduct of Nazi soldiers during WWII who were also just obeying orders of higher ranks?
“What we must do is make it absolutely clear to the American people that our ethos is to act legally, in as transparent a manner as we can, and in a way that they would be proud of if we could tell them the full story,” said Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence in a statement.
It is difficult to ignore the valid information gained by these interrogations, but I do not believe that these inhuman acts and the extent of the legal manipulation made by our government make us proud today, and I doubt if they would have really made us proud a few years ago, in light of different circumstances.
It is important to remember that we are an enlightened society that values moral conduct, and we should apply compassionate, or at the very least humane, consideration to all individuals regardless of the situation.
