The Torture Debate Is Being Politically Abused

Republicans and Democrats have gotten wind of a chance to expose the other party as a betrayer of values in order to influence the coming election. Is that appropriate? No, but that’s politics.

The UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights has demanded that all those responsible for the American interrogation methods used on al-Qaida prisoners be brought before a court. The “criminal conspiracy” for “systematic crimes and gross violations of international human rights law” must “face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.” The liberal American civil rights group, ACLU, which is highly influential in the Democratic Party, wants the same thing.

Bush and Cheney have put themselves on the line for the intelligence agency with no ifs, ands or buts. Their opponents say that, because of this, they have all but asked to be brought before a court.

The Republicans and the CIA defend themselves with a passion that is not just the outcry of someone who has been caught red-handed. First, they say, waterboarding, used under circumstances of the highest investigative pressure, is not torture under U.S. law, but legal. All Special Forces recruits undergo it — not out of sadism, but rather so that they know their mental breaking point. Obama’s Department of Justice investigated the process and did not bring any legal complaints.

Second, the interrogators of the al-Qaida prisoners have not been heard by the Senate, which contradicts U.S. law. Third, it is not true that the methods were counterproductive. Crucial information originated from the combination of normal and enhanced interrogation.

Un-American or Not?

One does not have to truthfully follow them in all points. However, these counteraccusations are also not pulled out of thin air — in any case in the eyes of U.S. voters, in whose bones Sept. 11, 2001 sits as deep as Pearl Harbor. The terror report, as loathsome as it reads, does not cap off a bad decade. An already polarized land, heading toward a presidential election, on the contrary receives another topic of disagreement.

The Democrats want to portray unreasonable Republicans as “un-American.” The Republicans sense a chance to situate the Democrats before the election year as those who represent those abroad who are morally outraged but helpless against terrorism, if not actually representing the terrorists themselves.

Because of this, investigations by the UN court of the Hague will fail on Washington’s veto. However, the U.S. has ratified the UN Convention against Torture. National initiatives against the Americans responsible, as well as against their helpers in governments overseas, are thinkable. The Spanish-British proceedings against Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet demonstrate what would be possible.