An Iceberg in the Sea of Ethics

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.--Earl Warren

I've been thinking a lot about the killing of self-proclaimed terrorist, Osama bin Laden. My issue is not with the guilt or innocence of Osama bin Laden. He has declared himself responsible for 9/11; even if he's not, just wanting the credit suggests that if not 9/11 then he is responsible for other acts of terrorism. However, even if the police catch a person strangling the body with bare hands that person is still entitled to dues process under our laws which means a trial, a judgment, and a sentence. Even if that sentence is death, we don't simply execute someone without the benefit of due process, even when guilt is certain. Indeed, in our justice system, confession is often about brokering a deal, generally to take the death penalty off the table. In other words those who declare I did it gain a reprieve from execution and generally receive a sentence of life imprisonment in exchange for saving the state the cost of a full prosecution.

Traditionally, adherence to a system of justice that strives for fairness and an even application of law is taken as a significant mark of civilization. We, as a nation, certainly criticize and strongly object to the paths of nations that imprison without trial, punish without due process, and eliminate undesirable elements by simply executing them.

Our track record in recent years has not been good. We invaded Iraq based on false information which more and more evidence supports that our leadership knew to be false. We have imprisoned people at Guantanamo without benefit of trial which violates the Constitution in which many of us purport to believe. We have consistently refused to acknowledge that these prisoners, who haven't been officially charged with anything, have a right to a speedy trial, having made up a new term to apply to them, "enemy combatants." They are neither prisoners of war nor prisoners of our legal system, expressly so that they may be denied the due process owed under military law or civil law. I think the summary execution of bin Laden is yet another misstep on the part of this country. We insist to others that it is not might that makes right but that laws ensure justice for all. Yet in this instance we behaved much the same as any of the governments whom we have criticized in the past, acting as judge, jury and executioner and bypassing even a semblance of justice. Papa Doc and Idi Amin should not be our role models.

Funny thing is, the outcome would have been the same. No doubt bin Laden would have been found guilty and sentenced to death but in the eyes of the world we would have appeared to adhere to the higher standard for which we have so strongly advocated since the founding of this country. We haven't always reached that standard, but if a man or a woman's reach does not exceed his or her grasp, then what's a heaven for? (my thanks to Robert Browning)

I take issue with assassination as justice, no matter how vile the person. When we make exceptions to our ethics, to our code of law,  we lessen ourselves, betray our own integrity. My concern isn't for bin Laden, but for this country's ability to claim moral authority (which we do quite often) after this assassination. Imagine any other country entering a nation uninvited and killing a person who by its own account was not armed because of some terrorist act that person allegedly committed against its people, how would we regard that action?

Fellow blogger, Elizabeth, shared a passage from an article by Noam Chomsky that fleshes out my rhetorical question.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's, and he is not a "suspect" but uncontroversially the "decider" who gave the orders to commit the "supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

If It Quacks Like A Duck, It's Torture

I began writing this blog entry on Monday, April 20, but wouldn't you know it, my boss actually expected me to do some work. The week progressed from busy to busier, so I'm just finishing it up today. Hey, this idea was fresh on Monday.

My sister likes to tease me by pointing out when I state the obvious. Well here I go, I'm about to state the obvious--waterboarding is torture. According to the headlines in the news, the CIA used waterboarding 266 times in interrogating two (2) suspects. That's right folks, just two suspects.

According to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum, Abu Zubaydah, an alleged Al Qaeda operative, was subjected to waterboarding 83 times, and the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Before anyone gets all excited and starts screaming, "They were terrorists! Don't you love your country! They don't deserve any better!" Yes, they are human beings that may have committed acts of terrorism. Yes, I love my country, but that doesn't mean that I'm blind to its flaws. Because I love my country, I believe that we deserve better.

I grew up in the 1950s, during the Cold War. I vaguely recall discussion in the news of the Gulag and Siberia and Russians. I didn't understand what any of it was about but I do remember when I was older, watching some movie that was about brave men who escaped from some prison in Siberia where they had been subjected to torture. The escapees were the heroes; the torturers were the bad guys.

I remember when this country wore the white hats and aspired to be the good guys. We weren't always perfect, but we tried to uphold ideas of right and of justice, sort of like Camelot, without the king or the round table. What happened to us? It's easy enough to blame George W. Bush, but that's not fair or accurate. He didn't elect himself--twice. I understood our anger after 9/11 but anger is like acid, it eats away at your reason until you are consumed with notions of do unto others before they do unto you, a total corruption of the tenets of the God that everyone from Miss America to Grammy award winners thanks for making it all possible.

Our new attorney general, Eric Holder, stated definitively that waterboarding is torture and President Obama has put an end to its use as an acceptable interrogation technique. However, some of my fellow Americans are upset that the president released the memos that confirmed what we already knew, that the CIA used torture to interrogate prisoners. Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama Administration should be investigated for releasing the torture memos, joining the chorus of Republicans accusing the president of putting the nation at risk by releasing the torture memos.

The funny thing about having ethical standards and applying the principles of justice is that it's easy to do when everything is going well. It's no real test of your ethical nature to do the right thing when there are no challenges to be overcome. Let's take a simple example. You are an ethical person who believes that stealing is wrong. However, you've recently lost your job. You're facing foreclosure and you have a family to care for. On your way back from a job interview that didn't go very well. you witness an accident. A Wells Fargo truck loaded with cash crashes into a guard rail, flips, and there is money all over the highway. It's not your money, but other people are leaping out of their cars and gathering up piles of bills. What do you do? Is stealing suddenly acceptable? Should you grab your share? Or do you uphold your principles and not participate in all the money grabbing fun?

When this country was attacked on 9/11, adhering to our principles, to our ethical standards was our biggest test and I think that we failed miserably. We had an opportunity to rise above the hurt and anger and demonstrate that we would not abandon our struggles to maintain justice, to uphold right, even in the face of this devastating attack. I'm no Pollyanna, and I don't believe that pre-9/11 America was a paragon of virtue, but I do think that we aspired to be better than our baser impulses, tried to walk the high road even though we sometimes failed. After 9/11, we quit even trying. We not only tortured people, we justified it and now, we'd rather pretend that it didn't even happen. The motto for a lot of people is, "Let's not talk about it."

That's stupid. The past cannot be unwritten by pretending that it didn't happen. I'm glad that President Obama has dragged our nasty behavior out into the light; however, now he faces quite a dilemma. People were tortured in violation of our own laws and the Geneva Convention; shouldn't somebody be punished?

There's the rub, who do we punish? The CIA agents were told by then Attorney General John Ashcroft that their interrogation techniques were within the law. Former national Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice gave approval for CIA operatives to use waterboarding on prisoners. President Bush apparently believed that we were acting within the law. He was fully aware of the techniques being used to gain information, as was Dick Cheney. Can we hold the CIA agents accountable without also holding the lawyers, Bush, and Cheney responsible? What precedent will it set if the current administration were to prosecute CIA operatives who acted with the full approval of the previous administration? Is it fair to hold the foot soldiers responsible for carrying out policy that was set at the top level. What about Congress? There were memos , meetings, and presentations about what was being done to detainees. Are there members of Congress who should be indicted?

Sorry, but I don't have any answers, just a whole bunch of questions, annoying isn't it? I do have a prediction. There will be no trials of anyone because to pursue charges against anyone would require pursing charges against them all and that's not going to happen. I'm not even sure if it should, because I think that ultimately the guilt is shared by all the people in America who turned their backs on justice in pursuit of vengeance. Perhaps the best that we can do is to acknowledge our collective fall from grace and commit to regaining that high road again where we strive to "...hold these truths to be self-evident..." that all humankind is created equal.