Metaphysics deals with the nature of reality. One of its most famous philosophical riddles poses the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” After listening to Vice President Dick Cheney’s responses during an ABC interview about our governments use of torture, I’d like to pose another metaphysical question. “If no one prosecutes you for committing a crime, did you actually commit one?”
On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if captured, were reverse engineered and applied to prisoners captured during the Iraq war. The techniques, taught as part of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program or SERE, include sleep deprivation, the prolonged use of stress positions, forced nudity, hooding, exposure to extreme temperatures, subjecting prisoners to loud music and flashing lights, and waterboarding.
The authors of the reported concluded that the abuse of detainees in US custody could not simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. Rather, senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and then authorized their use against detainees.
While Cheney’s name was not mentioned specifically in the Senate report, (unlike President Bush for stripping prisoners of the protections of the Geneva Conventions in February 2002, and other administration officials, including the Vice President’s former legal counsel and current chief of staff David Addington) Cheney’s responses during the ABC interview clearly indicate he knew and approved of torture, particularly his admission that he was involved in approving the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Cheney stated, “I felt very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do.”
The law is not in question. Legal precedence has been established. After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. During the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, leading members of Japan’s military and government elite were charged with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. The Geneva Convention is clear. Waterboarding is torture and is illegal.
Richard Nixon once famously stated, “If the President does it, it’s not a crime.” That is as illogical and indefensible as Cheney’s reasoning regarding torture, particularly as reports surface that it provides little useful information and many false leads. For the country to allow this administration’s crimes to go unpunished is as immoral as torture itself. Let’s stop the nuanced debate and revisionist history. Let’s create our own reality.