As the Senate Judiciary Hearing on Torture ended today, someone in the audience shouted out to Senator Lindsay Graham,
We want the rule of law for everyone; it's (torture's) illegal, Senator, or did you miss that?
Good ole Graham had just finished saying that torture has
been going on for five hundred years
inferring that if it’s been around so long, it must be okay. . .
Torture has been going on since the history of man. Just read the history of war around the world.
That doesn’t make it right. Or legal.
Over 400 years ago, Shakespeare, in Henry the V, which is quite a melodramatic and sentimental glorification of "God on our side" war (great speeches notwithstanding), has something to say about abuse of the enemy. . .
Bardolph, one of King Hal’s buddies from his reveling Falstaff days, is found looting a church during the campaign to conquer the French. When Henry learns of his old friend’s actions, he nonetheless must abide by his law concerning treatment of the enemy proper, and property, which he reiterates in the hearing of all his company:
We (the royal "we") would have all such offenders so cut off (put to death; Bardolph is hanged): and we give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language. For when levity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.
Henry V, Act 3, Scene 6.
This treatment of the enemy seems very like Sherwood Moran's in the story related by Henry Porter yesterday, http://www.dailykos.com/...
I typed several of Lindsay Graham's comments today , having followed the blogs, and caught the last half hour on the web. These comments followed the hearing, and were still audible on CSPAN3. I am writing them as accurately as I heard them, with my comments either in between, or in parenthesis.
Graham posited that the Bush administration’s intent was to
Make policy not violate the law.
He dismissed the rhetoric surrounding the issue because
the Law is subject to different interpretations.
So, who is to say what is right or wrong? Graham continued. . .He stated, if
we don’t do things beyond the army field manual . . .Shame on us....(the army manual) is not the end all...We can’t restrict ourselves (in time of war), We’ve got to hit them before they hit us...(sound familiar? preemptive strikes?) We can do that without going back to the inquisition.
Furthermore. . .
The enemy shouldn’t know what we do. We should have a rational policy to move forward. We have to continue to give the President legal authority to hold people (who are dangerous). . .How do you hold someone off the battlefield. . .An independent judiciary should make that decision. . .a FISA type setting. . .this is a war without end. . .Bush held the courts out and Congress out (of the process), (but) not this President.
Great, Graham believes the President is opening these issues up to the overview of Congress and the Judiciary...that's a good start. But it seems Graham would handle the issue by going back to the FISA table to reinstate checks and balances. The Congress has done a great job with this so far. This makes me dubious, and I wonder how,as well, the question of limiting the President's power to allow future illegal actions through executive order would be addressed?
Meanwhile, the conflict in Afghanistan is mushrooming. . . perhaps because of our ambivalence to act decisively against torture—a primary recruiting tool.
How do we move forward, with integrity, and for the safety of our soldiers as well as our nation, if those who govern us are above the rule of law? Non-accountability engenders self-interested dictatorial rule at the expense of the consensus of the citizenry.
Hmmmmm. What really matters to Mr. Graham is that
We shouldn’t put men and women at risk of having their reputations ruined. Let’s have interrogation techniques that are within our values. . . We can move forward, we’ve learned from our mistakes, we have laws in place now, we should follow them.
I truly wonder what Mr. Graham means by "our values," if they are as arbitrary as he believes the interpretation of the law to be.
I do believe that we as a nation can’t possibly have learned from our mistakes, from the breaking of the rule of law, from the high crimes and misdemeanors committed-- if the people who ordered these illegal actions are not held accountable. How do you uphold any law without holding those who break them accountable for their actions? How do you prevent others from doing the same, without the deterrent of consequences? If our representatives will not hold them accountable, then we, the people must strive to do so, by every means constitutionally possible.