This is just sad. It’s also what a slippery slope looks like. In addition to destroying the last bit of moral standing we had in the world, it will also lead to torture of Americans in the future. In fact, here’s a few ways how:
-Many US Soldiers (not just special forces) are required to have a pair of “sterile” BDU’s, which are worn when operating in sketchy border areas or overtly in hostile countries
-Even if US troops are wearing proper uniform, what’s to stop troops from another country (say, Syria) from simply going across the border and grabbing a couple of our guys, then saying they “were acting unlawfully”
-A US Soldier captured in civilian clothes while on vacation or off-base is transported to a very hostile country (almost like rendition) where a confession is tortured out of him, he is put on trial with secret evidence, and executed
And those are just a few of the obvious perils to the military. The fact that we will soon have suspended habeus corpus with no court review sounds an awful lot like something we fought against for 40 years. You know, that thing called communism.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
I hate to say it, but “moral standing” is definitely a thing of the past. Why should any enemy force treat our soldiers with care? After our PRESIDENT has admitted to torturing enemy operatives in secret prisons, can we possibly expect that our own troops will recieve the basic human dignities?
Bush doesn’t follow the “rules” of the international community. Including the Geneva Conventions. This is part of his ‘tough on terror’ theme, but at the same time he is condemning U.S. POWs to similar treatment when they are caught. Too bad the nightly news doesn’t delve into this topic.
I think you are overstating the effects on captured US troops. Whether not the US tortures prisoners will probably have little effect on how groups that are likely to end up capturing our troops treat them.
The US will use threats of military retalliation to try to keep people from using torture.
I think the damaging effect is it makes it even more clear that the US is just a bully, and perhaps worse is that it isn’t just the leadership, but old the ordinary citizens that want the US to be a bully. (If it was just the leadership, one would expect the leadership to try to keep the whole matter quiet rather than publically passing laws making it legal.)
“The US will use threats of military retalliation to try to keep people from using torture.”
While that will work for most countries, it will not work for all, especially those that are itching for a US attack. For example, suppose an incident similar to the USS Pueblo or the P-3 surveillance bird downed over China occurs. The problem is that we have literally given those countries the very legal tool they need. And if America does threaten and use military force, it will only lead to more and more escalations and a much larger threat of all-out war, until we are left incapable of defending ourselves.
So while I agree that it isn’t the biggest threat posed (that would be the suspension of habeus corpus), it will have long-lasting repercussions, especially in terms of future military operations.
The difference this makes for China is going to be slim. Even before if they thought that torture would gain them significantly they would still have done it. This would have been particularly true if the US didn’t know whether or not the people were alive (e.g. after a bailout). In that case they could torture in ways they didn’t leave lasting marks, kill the people in a way consistant with getting killed in the event and then delaying a bit more before returning the bodies to the US so that they couldn’t detect the time of death accurately.
If the operatives are on a mission that the US doesn’t want to admit to, then they can do anything they want to them and the US can’t use public embarrassment to get them to treat the prisoners humanely.
At one time I would have thought that the US population would be against torture as just plain wrong. But unfortunately it turns out they don’t. So some people have resorted to convincing them that there isn’t a good reason to torture, because you get a lot of bad information mixed in with the good and that other people might torture US personal if we going around torturing random arabs grabbed of the street. Unfortunately that isn’t likely to gain much sway with the current administration, since they like bad information that says want they want to hear, and they don’t give a crap about the people actually doing the fighting for them.