Tortured Reasoning

Andrew Sullivan's blog pointed me to an article in this weeks New Yorker that discusses the issue of detainee torture in Guantanamo Bay and the fight that was quietly fought by the Navy's General Counsel Alberto J. Mora against the policy until he recently retired.

The reasoning behind Mora's fight against this policy should ring true to anyone who has emigrated to the United States from a country ruled by an authoritarian or totalitarian government.

(Full Disclosure: I am one of those people. My parents left Haiti in search of freedom from the random violation of human rights that occurred there. To my parents, these were not isolated stories of unlawful detention, this was more up close and personal. My uncle was subjected to 7 years of confinement in prison for no other reason except for the fact that a member of the Tonton Macoute said he should be locked up.)

What Mora captures immediately upon being made aware that attorney's in the DOD had drafted a memorandum signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself (also available from the New Yorker) which stated in sum that the kinds of methods to be employed by staff at Guantanamo Bay could exceed the bounds of actions normally proscribed by the US law and the Geneva conventions, and that essentially no one would ever prosecute those who performed those acts on the detainees,, was this fundamental fact: the American system of justice founded on the constitution of the united states falls apart when the inalienable rights of human beings begin to be watered down depending on their place of birth or their nationality. To wit:

Mora thinks that the media has focused too narrowly on allegations of U.S.-sanctioned torture. As he sees it, the authorization of cruelty is equally pernicious. "To my mind, there's no moral or practical distinction," he told me. "If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America--even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It's a transformative issue. [Emphasis mine]

I agree with him wholeheartedly, and only wish that there were more people like him at the Pentagon.