Upon first reading Patrick Randall's viewpoint "In Defense of Torture," I clung to the hope that it was a weak attempt at satire. Surely he was trying to poke fun at the idea that the best way to defeat terrorists is to adopt their tactics. Unfortunately, strange as it may seem, his cheerleading for torture seemed to be entirely serious. As such, I feel a need to correct the dangerous notion that torture is "a legitimate tool of government for the preservation of national security."
Torture is always the wrong tactic for two broad reasons: First, it is antithetical to the ideals of liberty and justice that this great nation was founded upon. We cannot effectively fight the war against terrorism if we abandon the values and ideals that make the United States the leader of the free world. Second, of equal importance, the use of torture does nothing to protect us and is dangerously counter-productive to our national security.
On legal issues, Randall is guilty of some serious factual errors, such as claiming that there have been recent "Supreme Court [decisions] that ensure habeas corpus petitions for prisoners held in places like Guantanamo Bay" do not apply. In reality, on June 28, 2004 in Rasul v. Bush the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that "aliens, no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the Federal courts' authority." No, our polarized Supreme Court largely agrees that when the founding fathers banned "cruel and unusual punishment" they did not mean except in Cuba, Romania, Pakistan, etc. Surely any strict constructionists out there reading this will agree with me.
Randall's aversion to fact checking does not stop at our own borders. Randall implies that Israel practices and advocates torture in the fight against terrorism. This is a slanderous falsehood, as the Israeli Supreme Court declared torture illegal in 1999. Its ruling said that "a democratic, freedom-loving society does not accept that investigators use any means for the purpose of uncovering truth. The rules pertaining to investigators are important to a democratic state. They reflect its character."
The Israeli ruling shows the intersection between the tenuous legal ground for torture and its even shakier moral basis. Randall may be willing "to treat the moral aspects of this subject briefly and move on," but I am not, because how we as Americans behave in times of war defines us as a nation. John McCain has decried the danger of forgetting that "we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea - not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion - but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights." We must ensure that when people around the world think of America they think of a shining light for democracy and not as a country that operates secret prisons in Eastern Europe.
In advocating the use of torture, Randall is arguing for a less safe America. First, he ignores the key practical argument against torture - it does not work. When Randall says that "torture is not always the most effective method of obtaining vital information, nor are its results always accurate," he is making a serious understatement. When John McCain was a POW during the Vietnam War, he was routinely tortured. On one occasion, his captors beat him, demanding to know the names of the members of his flight squadron. He instead gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. Similarly, if while tortured an al-Qaida operative gave us the name of his favorite Pakistani cricket player, American intelligence agents could spends days or even weeks chasing a red herring.
But Randall argues that when it comes to stopping terrorism the CIA knows best. This is the same CIA that was "either unwilling or unable to marshal the full range of Intelligence Community resources necessary to combat the growing threat," according to the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission. This is also the same CIA that delivered "slam-dunk" intelligence about Iraqi WMDs. This is the same CIA that reports to an administration which, yesterday, received 17 Fs and Ds and only one A from the 9/11 Commission on its efforts to protect America from terrorist attacks. So if the CIA is advocating torture as an effective tool in the war against terror, I think Congress should exercise some aggressive oversight and not just take their word for it.
Our intelligence operatives should not be spending valuable time beating prisoners and staging mock executions. If they are, they might as well spend their coffee breaks printing recruitment panels for al-Qaida, since they are already providing the content. The effort to defeat Islamic Terrorism is a battle for hearts and minds as well as a battle to kill terrorists, and that is a battle we lose at our own peril. When we torture prisoners we provide fodder for the extremists who are urging young Muslim men to take up arms against us.
Instead of wasting time on torture, the CIA should be trailing suspects, infiltrating cells, conducting long-term surveillance and revolutionizing the way it recruits and trains its members. Torture would not have prevented the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Better intelligence and the implementation of Richard Clarke's aggressive anti-terrorism plan of Jan. 2001 might have, but the new Bush administration had other foreign policy priorities.
Torture is the wrong policy for the United States and Randall's threat that our government is going to use torture regardless of public opinion is wrong, too. We are fortunate to live in a country governed by the people, for the people and our representatives have spoken loud and clear on this topic. Ninety senators voted to ban the torture of detainees, and the other nine might regret showing deference to Dick Cheney and the Bush administration just one year before midterm elections. After all, the Bush administration has been the main opponent to banning torture, and their approval rating (hovering somewhere around 37 percent) is amongst the lowest in history for a second term administration. Torture will not be an enduring policy in the United States because it is morally repugnant, legally indefensible and counterproductive to our national security and the American people know it.
Aaron Banks is a senior majoring in political science and art history. He is also the president of the Tufts Democrats.
