The US Has Fallen into the Perfect Trap

The practice of torture has discredited the U.S. because it allowed the enemy to incite it to throw its own moral standards overboard. But fundamental rights must also apply to the enemy.

Terrorism is propaganda — communication with real dead people, preferably in public view. In this sense, Sept. 11, 2001 was the perfect crime: First, an aircraft flew into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Then, when all the world’s cameras were focused on the burning tower, the second airplane followed. The result was the death of 3,000 people — and the wrath of the U.S. However, while seeking revenge, you should dig two graves, or so they say.

The second grave has now been opened and evidence of pure horror lies within: a striking, 499-page summary of 6,300 pages of internal CIA documents that sets out, in detail, how forces from the U.S. systematically tortured al-Qaida prisoners. Such occurrences are nothing new; the names of the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo internment camps are synonymous with the brutal interrogation methods known as “enhanced interrogation.”

The images of tortured and humiliated prisoners, mainly from the Iraqi prison, were seen worldwide and show that the U.S. had walked straight into a trap, giving every terrorist action true meaning for the first time: that of causing the opponent to throw their own moral standards overboard. The German Red Army Faction called it forcing the opponent to “show their true, fascist face.”*

Torture Becomes Moral Test Case

Torture and waterboarding became a political and moral test case. General Michael Hayden, long-term NSA chief and then CIA chief, explained this in an interview we conducted for an ARD film about “Catch 9/11”: “You have the right to say, I would rather you didn’t do that. But the claim that it doesn’t work is completely false. It works. Some of the information would not have been obtained otherwise.”* The new inquiries are taking care of this claim: It was not the torture that led to insights that revealed the way to bin Laden, for example, but the FBI’s normal investigative methods.

Donald Rumsfeld, when he was secretary of defense, approved many aggressive interrogation tactics for Guantánamo, including “stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them, physical contact, such as bodily pressure, use of mild, non-injurious physical contact, stress positions such as continuous standing … etc.”* The result was so terrible that even the agents could hardly bear it. However, even an appeal by the interrogators themselves to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia didn’t result in the end of the torture.

The Perpetrators Were Put on Trial; Those Who Gave the Commands Were Not

The pictures were seen worldwide. Those who had commissioned the torture program were, themselves, now visibly horrified. Donald Rumsfeld in that same interview: “Oh, that was a blow to the gut. The idea that people in our custody were treated in this way is simply terrible. In my opinion, that was inexcusable. It traveled the world and tarnished the reputation of the United States, of the Department of Defense.”* Those who committed these atrocities — and photographed them — were put on trial and convicted, but not those who gave the commands.

Rumsfeld has talked down his involvement: “Most people today think that interrogations are shown in the photos. That is completely wrong. These detainees are not being interrogated. They were guards, not specialist interrogators, and should never have committed such abuses. They have treated these people sadistically, irresponsibly and terribly when we should have treated them justly.”*

End of the Legends

The Senate report has done away with such legends. The torture was planned by those at the top, in the Pentagon, in the CIA headquarters in Langley. The values of the West were realized through waterboarding. This is how the war in Afghanistan and Iraq was lost — morally at first, and then militarily.

The medieval brutality of the “Islamic State,” the decapitation of kidnap victims, terror in the name of Allah, were not put into perspective by this. However, the 78-year-old senator from Arizona, John McCain, a die-hard hawk who had to endure five long years of ill treatment as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, said at the end of the debate in Washington that the report was destroying that which distinguished America from its enemies: namely, the belief that fundamental rights apply to everyone, even to enemies.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.