America’s Disgrace

The Senate’s C.I.A. torture report casts a light on one of the darkest hours in the history of the United States. Its revelations are a disgrace for the United States.

The 6,700-page report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about “interrogation methods” used in the post-9/11 era describes how a country ended up compromising its own principles.

It shows the brutal and lawless approach of C.I.A. agents. The methods used to get suspects to talk include water boarding, which causes the suspect to experience the sensation of drowning, sleep deprivation — up to 180 hours — whipping, mock burials, hour-long wall standing, and other methods formerly used in medieval times.

That America’s reputation hit an all-time low is not the fault of Islamists or anti-Americans in Europe, or in other parts of the world. It is mainly America’s fault. This situation is the C.I.A. and National Security Agency’s doing, created by torturing people and establishing a surveillance system unworthy of a free society. Whether they did all this based on explicit assignment from the government or by developing this life on their own throughout the years, while keeping individual cases a secret from the government, is secondary. The escapades’ spiritual fathers were President George W. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney.

The more simple-minded ones might see it as an imposition, but a country, which proclaims values and freedom, and which claims a leadership role for itself in this world, has to treat criminals differently than rogue regimes. Only then will true greatness and superiority become apparent. The U.S. has forgotten about that since Sept. 11, 2001.

This day is a celebration for Russia, China and Iran.

Any attempts of justification, for example by referring to historical exceptional situations, in which the U.S. found itself after the attack on the World Trade Center, are wrong. No matter how hurt, shocked or scarred the country might have been, nothing justifies the use of methods that are banned, with good reason, by the United Nations.

The Senate’s report is a first step toward coming to terms with this dark chapter. It is important to draw the correct conclusions now to ensure that America won’t ever fall so far below its own dignity again – regardless of whether because of anger, revenge or fear. Not all Americans have grasped that, as Bush and Cheney show by responding to the report by coming to the CIA’s defense.

Unfortunately, this day is also a celebration for all those countries, in which the state’s regular operation incorporates human rights violations — countries like Russia, China or Iran, which are fed up with Western countries’ lectures about human rights and democracy. They will use this report to prove to the world that in reality, there is no difference between their own regimes and the Western leading powers.

There is, however, an enormous difference — the report itself. In all of these countries, it is unthinkable that a committee of a freely elected parliament would ever investigate its own misconduct or publish it. Exactly this fact differentiates a democracy that got carried away and is willing to learn its lesson from an obstinate regime. Hopefully.