Today is Good Friday for approximately 250 million Orthodox(eg: Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, etc.) and Oriental(eg; Coptic, Armenian Ethiopian, etc.) Christians, who follow a different (and more ancient) calculation for the date of Pascha (Easter). It is day when I am not at school - yesterday was the final day of 3rd quarter for the students, and since my grades were in before I left I do not have to travel to school. It is thus a day on which I can step back and reflect a bit.
My wife is an Orthodox Christian, as I used to be - we were married in an Orthodox Church. And as I drove her in to work today she remarked that the sermon her priest made last night was about the Crucifixion, having used the word "torture" three times to describe the entire process, from the humiliation to the scourging to the nailing to the Cross.
These are the things rattling around my mind as I begin what will almost certainly be a less than coherent expression. Consider yourself warned if you decide to proceed below the fold.
As I "published" my grades yesterday (which requires me to do little more than check them on a computer and put in comment codes for each student before I press a button, since all grades for work are already in the computer), I was aware of the release of the memoranda from the previous administration. We did not discuss them in my classes. My three non-AP classes (two tuaght by my student teachers) needed to finish a lesson begun the day before, and for my 3 Advanced Placement classes, yesterday was the finally instructional day before the AP exam on May 4 - Monday we will review, Tuesday we will have a final unit test, and then 8 class days (and two sessions on the weekends) to get them prepared for that forthcoming exam. In a sense I am disappointed not to be able to discuss the release of the memoranda and the decision not prosecute in real time, but I am probably also relieved, because I would be in the difficult position of disagreeing strongly with the decisions of this administration, the justifications offered.
Just now I heard a news report where Adm. Blair tried to explain that in the dark days post 9-11 the CIA was trying desperately to protect the United States, something that may not seem so serious on a bright Spring day in 2009.
So let's go back to a Spring day almost 2 millenia ago. And for sake of this meditation I am going to ask you to suspend your personal beliefs about whether Jesus ever lived, or if he did, whether in fact he was as a major part of the world's population believes the incarnation of the One True God. Consider him as just one human, who to some degree represented a threat to the dominant power of the age.
He was brought before that authority, he was questioned, he was sentenced. He was scourged, he was required to carry his own cross (quite possible just the cross beam, but that really does not matter for my meditation), he was scourged, he was nailed and he was hung on the cross.
Think just of the last. It is by definition a "stress position." Just ponder that thought.
Then perhaps you might recall a photograph from Abu Ghraib, which I will not reproduce, of a person standing on a box, hooded, with arms outstretched as if on a cross. With wires attached, and the fear that should his arms drop he would be shocked.
Try this. Stand up, fully erect - and put your arms out straight out from your shoulders. See how long you can hold this position without your arms becoming weary, your shoulders starting to ache.
You can rest now for a moment. Now try it with your arms straight up, but still standing, not supporting your weight. See how long that can be sustained.
Rest again. Now, if you can, perhaps reach up to the door frame, grabbing it, and merely starting to put your weight thereupon, perhaps by taking your feet off the floor or bending your knees. When you can no longer sustain this, we are ready to continue.
When your arms are so extended, your diaphragm may be stretched, making it difficult to breathe without effort. And if you are supporting your weight by hanging, even partially, the pain in shoulders can quickly become excruciiating. But at least you can let go, or lower your weight onto the support of your legs.
Not the person on a cross, which is one reason it is such an excruciating death.
And not the person hung by the arms at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib, placed in a "stress position." What a sick euphemism, isn't it?
With just this small taste, do you not already experience something you would describe as torturous, even if it does not rise to the level of incipient organ failure used to justify such treatment of a fellow human beng?
Perhaps we can consider this another way. Imagine treatment of a pet in such a way that caused it excruciating pain, that caused it to howl, what the reaction would be - the ASPCA would intervene, the person so treating an animal would be criminally charged with cruelty to animals. And yet, despite this clear demarcation of law, despite the at least nominal Christianity of the strong majority of people in this nation - followers of a person they believed suffered torture - we have those who try to rationalize such treatment of other humans, to claim it is not torture.
Some of my students struggled this quarter. It is normal. I teach few seniors, but it is not at all uncommon to see such slumping from them - after all, the transcripts have gone in for college admissions, and most by now have received their acceptances and scholarship offers, and merely deciding which to take, and thinking about the forthcoming prom. Yet even sophomores get distracted - especially as the weather also begins to warm and the skies brighten, dispelling the gloom of the now-passed winter season. We are often able to turn them around by a combination of cajoling and of application of sanctions for their failure to follow well-established rules and procedures: don't hand in the work, take a zero. And while there can be some flexibility for unusual circumstances, teachers and administrators learn very quickly that if they begin to waive those rules and procedures for some then others quickly demand that they also not be held accountable. Academic performance and the necessary minimal order necessary for it to occur can thereby quickly banish.
I sometimes tell my students a moral tale. A man walks into a bar, walks up to a woman and asks, "If I give you a million dollars, will you sleep with me?" She answers, "for a million dollars, sure!"
Whereupon he puts one penny on the bar and says "Let's go."
"What do you think I am?" the woman protests.
"Madam," he responds, "you established that with your first answer. Now we are merely haggling over the price."
I think of that teaching tale as I consider how our administration is reacting. Many of us argued vehemently against the slippery slope rationalization of the ticking nuclear bomb scenario. Yet is that not precisely the justification I just heard from Dennis Blair? If we begin to rationalize the first steps towards torture, by the million dollar offer of the ticking nuclear bomb scenario or the fear of another 9-11, where can find a fixed point where we will know to stop? At one point is the woman justified in asking her question about what the man thinks she is - is it 100,000, 10,000 1,000 100 10 1.0 or even just one cent. Is there a line? If as the man responds, by her first answer she has classifed herself as a prostitute, does not the justification of torture even in the most extreme of circumstances not thereby classify us as torturers, those willing to violate the most basic protection of fellow humans, those willing to be unbound by law or custom or even common humanity?
I teach adolescents. They will make mistakes. Part of my job as a teacher is to help them learn to accept responsibilities for their mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are because they did not think through what they are doing. Those are more willingly admitted. But sometimes they have done things they KNEW at the time were wrong, but they hoped they would not get caught. It is harder for them to admit such errors - it is here that the rationalizations offered become most intense, and also most convoluted.
If one studies ethics, one inevitably will encounter the thought of Immanuel Kant, especially the notion of the categorical imperative. I often explore it with my students, not merely because of its applicability to actions of individuals, but because it is something to consider with respect to actions of governments as well. Kant's first, and best-known, formulation of the categorical imperative:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
In a sense the U. S. insisted upon this by going forth with war crime trials after WWII, at Nuremberg and elsewhere. We in theory established as a universal principle that following orders is not in itself a defense when one has done certain acts. Last night I heard John Dean recount that several of the Watergate burglars had charges dismissed on the grounds that they were told by E. Howard Hunt that the actions they were taking were a matter of serious national security. While that may be a precedent that some would cite, precedents can be wrong and can thus be reversed, even precedents by a near-unanimous Supreme Court, which in 1940 voted 8-1 that Jehovah's Witnesses could be expelled for refusing to recite the Pledge yet in 1943 voted 6-3 that no one could be compelled to participate in pledge or other patriotic ceremonies.
I am not by nature vindictive. I believe in mercy. I also believe in applying it in a proper way.
President Obama has plenary clemency powers. He can pardon anyone for any violation of Federal law. Ideally, pardons should be applied only after the guilt of a person has been ascertained, that in fact the person to be pardoned is guilty of a violation of the law, since after all our system presumes all accused to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. As wrong as it was to justify torture of those we suspect, however strongly, to be guilty of plotting against the United States or having acted in a terroristic fashion, do we not abandon our most dear principles by forgoing a trial before we punish, for torture is by its very nature punishing? Does not our legal system strongly sanction those who use improper coercion, disallowing evidence obtained improperly from being used in a criminal trial, precisely to circumscribe authorities acting without oversight as judge, jury and even executioner? Remember, people died while being subjected to "enhanced interrogation methods" even though they had not been convicted,and perhaps not even formally charged.
And do we not have habeas corpus precisely to prevent authorities from holding some indefinitely without charging when that person has not been convicted of anything? Do we not have a speedy trial requirement so that people are not held in custody without requiring those charging them to demonstrate - to a grand jury or a court - that there is some reasonable basis for so holding them?
As a teacher, I try to teach my students to acknowledge their actions. Then and only then can we discuss if there are extraordinary circumstances that should affect the consequences for those actions.
I was an enlisted Marine. We were clearly instructed in the Geneva Conventions. I can remember in 1965 also being instructed that we were NOT to obey an illegal order.
Of course, most of those in the chain of command responsible for torture, for "enhanced interrogation methods," never served in the military, although Secretary Rumsfeld did, and some of those subjected to such methods were in the custody of military officials who should have known. I am not that sympathetic to those in the CIA who used such abusive methods, because we know that at least at Gitmo the FBI expressed such serious concerns that FBI agents were removed from the interrogations. As law enforcement people they and their superiors knew they were bound by law and ratified international treaties. So when did the CIA first seek the blanket blessing from Justice, was it only after the FBI objected and pulled out? And if so, does that not mean they were seeking justification for something they always intended to do?
I think there should be a clear legal record. If the agents are not convicted, then they can claim they were cleared by a jury of their peers. After all, any jury can nullify charges. If convicted, the President can choose to grant full pardons, but the fact of the conviction would represent a record of the wrongful actions done under the color of authority.
How would I address these issues with my students were I meeting with them today? No doubt I would see what they thought and why, but I doubt I could avoid telling them why I think the actions of this administration are wrong. It is unlikely to to come up in the day before a test. We will have to see.
And today my wife, and millions of other Eastern Christians, will spend part of the day in church, commemorating the torture of one they believe to be the Son of God. He was scourged, he was stripped. And he was placed into an excruciating stress position, not to obtain information, but to hurt him, to make him suffer, and thereby to kill him. A stress position.
We may now have a policy of never again, but those words ring as false to my ear as they do when I consider how often since 1945 the world has stood by as additional genocides were ongoing.
And we have given the lie to what we imposed after World War II. We finally have an occasion of crimes against humanity - since torture is supposed to be universally rejected in the community of nations - wherein we do not hold all accountable.
We are trying to deport the aging John Demanjuk for atrocities done more than half a century ago in a concentration camp. Why bother, when we are unwilling to hold ourselves, all of us accountable, for atrocities done as national policy in our immediate past.
Richard Nixon should have been tried, convicted, and then - if he accepted his guilt - pardoned. By the rationale this administration uses, if I can get sufficient written authorization from the Justice department, I am bound by no law, no standard of humanity. And if not so bound, have I not thereby removed myself from humanity and myself fair game for any action in retribution? Have I not said that the rules of humanity do not bind me if I don't want to be bound? What consequences then for our military, even ordinary Americans taken into custody overseas.
Someone was tortured to death almost 2,000 years ago. 1/3 of the people in the world define themselves in some way by that death by torture, something 1/4 billion people commemorate today.
Millions of school children are watching, not just mine, not just those in the United States, but around the world. They are learning that we find excuses for actions done our behalf, and they will remember that.
I fear the consequences, most of all, I fear the moral consequences to this nation.
Not the thoughts I wanted to ponder today.
Peace?