Until the Bush administration came into office and proceeded to laud themselves for their willingness to deal "harshly" with persons suspected of terrorism, or of knowing a terrorist, or of looking like a terrorist, or of sharing a name with a suspected terrorist, I never thought this country would ever reach the point where torture became a more-or-less open policy option, with a significant portion of its political establishment openly advocating and defending torture (even if lacking the honesty to call it by its proper name).
And until the Obama administration came into office and started talking about "looking forward" rather than getting "bogged down in the past," I never thought this country would ever reach the point where people would be allowed to get away with torture with no credible threat of criminal liability.
The adoption of and refusal to punish torture has created some delicious, if painful, ironies. Some of them are obvious, such as the spectacle of the nation that is the first to praise itself for its commitment to human rights and the "rule of law" jettisoning that commitment so easily when the time comes to apply that alleged commitment to itself, the true test of one's commitment to any moral principle. But there are other, less obvious ironies.
More musings below.
Here's an irony that really hits me. When 21 or so horses collapse dead at a Florida polo tournament, federal authorities immediately launch a vigorous investigation. But when 120+ "enemy combatants" die in US custody, the public hardly hears about it, and federal authorities immediately do next to nothing. Indeed, some federal authorities actively try to prevent investigations. One has to wonder whether there would be more outrage, or whether we'd be hearing arguments in favor of closing the books on the past coming from the Obama administration, if we learned that part of the 'enhanced interrogation' program involved the mistreatment of detainees' pets.
Another striking irony is the utterly bankrupt arguments one hears these days about the alleged effectiveness of torture, which are offered in defense of the systematic policy of torture and mistreatment that was devised and implemented from the highest levels of government. I can't help but wonder what, exactly, those who offer the "effectiveness" trope think they're proving.
Think about it: assuming that claims of effectiveness can even be taken at face value, doesn't the argument justify anything? Drawing and quartering? Pulling out fingernails? Burning with acid? Wouldn't it justify torturing, raping...even killing...detainees' children or spouses in front of them? I can imagine some detainees would be willing to keep their mouths shut under direct torture, but would 'break' if they saw a loved one, especially their child, tortured. If that is 'beyond the pale,' why? Because it's illegal? That can't be it, because so is torture. Because it involves infliction of pain and suffering on the innocent? That can't be a useful distinction, either, since we know, because the government has conceded, that a goodly number of detainees had no knowledge of or participation in the things they were interrogated about.
The meta-irony here, of course, is that the right-wing, which has spent decades condemning liberals for their alleged moral relativism and situational ethics are eager to undercut the single most inviolable principle known to law, the prohibition against torture, because torture is allegedly "effective." Talk about moral relativism.
I guess the worst irony of all is that we have given every torture regime in the world the legal brief for how to justify torture. I mean, Iran can probably make a colorable claim that at least some of the people it detains, and who claim mistreatment, are threats to the Iranian government. International law, in fact, would not prevent Iran from arresting and trying people for plotting to carry out violent and subversive acts against the Iranian government. Every government in the world has the right, in the eyes of international law, to deploy its judicial system against such persons, as long as the process and their treatment conformed with international standards of fairness, neutrality and due process. But the US government has gone on record, in official memos filled with arcane legal arguments, in favor of the proposition that international law does not prevent a state from deploying torture against persons held indefinitely without charge if "national security" is allegedly served by it. And if all else fails, Iranian spin doctors can come on TV and claim how effective it is to waterboard "high value" detainees.
That just leaves me wondering how they treat horses in Iran.