The moral and intellectual pygmy that the American public (and the Supreme Court) vested with the highest office in the land, reached a new low this past week by vetoing a bill that would have banned the CIA from torturing captives. I am trying to recall a worse point in the collective political life of this nation. The only thing comparable I can come up in terms of betraying the most core principles by which we live within the last 80 or 90 years would be the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II
The legislation in question would have prohibited cruel and inhuman treatment of captives and limited the CIA to using interrogation techniques approved in the Army Field Manual. President Bush, in justifying the veto, claimed that the permitted interrogation techniques were inadequate because they were designed for captured enemy soldiers, not "hardened terrorists." What Bush seems to fundamentally misunderstand is that the tactics we are willing to employ in interrogation have nothing to do with the nature of those individuals we have captured, but rather the character of the nation that is doing the interrogating.
There will be an historical reckoning with respect to the Bush presidency -- the staggering degree to which this man has undermined our moral, fiscal, economic and military standing. I am confident that he will be viewed as the worst two term president in our history. But of all of the inadequacies and failings of him and his administration, I truly believe the overt, albeit Orwellian ("enhanced interrogation techniques"), embrace of torture will be seen as by far his greatest sin.
(As a side note, I was fascinated that the New York Times chose to characterize this story as one in which Bush is standing up for an expansive view of executive power, as opposed to one in which he is striving to become the American Pinochet.)
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