The Moral Measure of a Civilization Is in Its Treatment of Enemies

In the heat of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln made a speech in which he referred sympathetically to the Southern rebels. A member of the audience lambasted him for wanting to treat his enemies kindly when he ought to be thinking of destroying them. Lincoln's answer:

"Why, madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

Harshness and cruelty were to be banished from the moral imagination of the nation he was trying to save.

The late Jack Maple, a famously flamboyant but phenomenally effective former deputy commissioner of the NYPD, wrote that "the more information a detective has, the more creative, authoritative and effective he or she can be." Under attack in 2001, and then at war in Iraq in 2003, American law enforcement, intelligence and military really didn't have much information at first. They rounded up the usual suspects, but didn't know what usual meant. So they smacked people around, and that was always a bad idea, as Maple said:

"Forget that smacking somebody around is illegal and just plain wrong, it's also the quickest way to ruin the chances of getting a statement of any kind."

Professional interrogators talk about building empathy and dependence. Maple would get down on his knees and pray with a suspect if he thought that would work. But the best technique? "If you can get them to laugh, you'll get a statement. That's always true." Internal CIA documents reveal that empathy is also likely what got Abu Zubaydah to reveal how Al Qaeda planned 9/11 and its other operations. His torture brought nothing of real value, only the moral demeaning of him and his tormentors.

The Bush administration had long maintained that the overtly cruel and abusive detainees of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were, as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put it, "a few bad apples." But the recent release of CIA documents now shows plainly that the Bush administration's approach to prisoner abuse was rotten to the core. The Obama administration, to its eternal credit, has resolved to expose this moral canker to the light (although 4 former CIA directors would prefer to let it fester in the fog of secrecy). But refusal to allow justice to hold anyone accountable, and excise the abuse from our body politic, makes its return more likely.

When military officers at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, struggled in the fall of 2002 to find ways to get terrorism suspects to talk, they turned to the CIA, which had had spent several months experimenting with the limits of physical and psychological pressure. They took the top lawyer for the CIA's Counterterrorist Center to Guantánamo, where he explained that the definition of illegal torture was "written vaguely":

"It [torture] is basically subject to perception," said the CIA lawyer, Jonathan Friedman, according to meeting minutes released at a Senate hearing in June 2008: "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

The CIA used waterboarding on prisoners with the approval of the Justice Department. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice later confirmed in a statement to congressional investigators in September 2008 that the Bush administration had issued a pair of secret memos that explicitly endorsed the CIA's use of waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques against terrorist suspects.

The 2002 meeting at Guantánamo showed how CIA lawyers believed they had found a legal loophole permitting the agency to use "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods overseas as long as they didn't lead to the detainee's death. Some military personnel objected, to their credit. Others, like military lawyer Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, did not:

COL Cummings: We can't do sleep deprivation.

LTC Beaver: Yes, we can - with approval.

Dave Becker: We have had many reports from Bagram [military prison in Afghanistan] about sleep deprivation being used.

LTC Beaver: True, but officially it's not happening.... The ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] is a serious concern. They will be in and out, scrutinizing our operations.... This would draw a lot of negative attention.

Friedman: The CIA is not held to the same rules as the military. In the past when the ICRC had made a big deal about detainees, the DOD (Department of Defense) has "moved" them away from the attention of the ICRC. Upon questioning from the ICRC about their whereabouts, the DOD's response has repeatedly been that the detainee merited no status under the Geneva Convention.

LTC Beaver: We will need documentation to protect us.

Friedman: Yes, if someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of the cause of dath, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental. Everything must be approved and documented.

Lt. Beaver wrote a now-infamous Oct. 11, 2002, memo that determined abusive methods could be used against detainees at Guantánamo Bay prison because they were not considered prisoners of war. Her proposed methods included extended isolation, 20-hour interrogations, death threats and waterboarding. She later told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "it was simply not foreseeable" that her memo became the primary justification for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's approval to use harsher methods, which Vice-President Dick Cheney later admitted (or rather vaunted) personally signing off on:

"I cannot, however, accept responsibility for what happened to my legal opinion after I properly submitted it to my chain of command.... I did not expect that my opinion, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Amy Judge Advocate General's Corps, would become the final word on interrogation policies and practices within the Department of Defense."

Although then U.S Attorney General John Aschcroft also approved waterboarding and other cruel techniques, complaints by FBI agents about abusive interrogation tactics at Guantanamo and other U.S. military sites reached the White House and National Security Council but prompted no effort to curb practices that the agents considered ineffective and illegal.

The most generous interpretation of the decisions of our political leadership to torture in this way, and of the craven acquiescence to it by elements in our intelligence community and military leadership, was that the U.S government was in a panic after 9/11: desperate for information that would save American lives from further surprise attack, and also eager for some kind of proof that the administration had been right about justify the "liberation" of Iraq because of the threat from its association with Al-Qaeda or because of its Weapons of Mass Destruction, or whatever. The discussions are chilling, and reminiscent of those revealed at the Nuremberg trials and elsewhere between the German SS and army officials of the Wehrmacht and prison authorities, who were also divided over how to treat detainees and avoid the "negative attention" of the Red Cross at Theresienstadt and other concentration camps.

There is always a concerted effort of those involved in cruelty, and their apologists, to bury ethical concerns underneath legalistic mumbo jumbo and to ignore the overriding question for any civilization: Is this moral? It is moral progress, I believe, that there more people than not who find Abu Ghraib and waterboarding disgusting. Unfortunately, a number of members of the U.S. government have not been loathe to exploit the depths of human misery and degradation.

Reputation, like life itself, is a complex affair that is difficult to sustain but simple to destroy. As General Douglas Stone, who took over charge of detainees for the Multi National Force in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib scandal, told me last year before he retired from his command:

"We have turned around 180 degrees to show respect for any of the detainees in our care: respect for the culture, for the religion and for the history of the place where our compounds are. But what those few did [at Abu Ghraib] will probably be the images best remembered of this war for a hundred years from now."

President Obama, like General Stone, clearly recognizes that cruel and abusive punishment - whether called "harsh interrogation" or "torture" - violate the basic principles upon which the American Republic was founded regarding the physical sanctity of the individual, principles that have served as the template for all subsequent elaborations of human rights around the globe. But the restoration of our reputation and standing in the world requires more than just a restatement of principles. It requires that those who violate those principles be brought to justice.

Scott Atran is research director in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris; presidential scholar in sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City; and visiting professor of psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is the author of the forthcoming "Talking to the Enemy; The Dreams, Delusions and Science of Sacred Conflicts " (Ecco/HarperCollins).

Comments

[MacQ]

The headline is correct.
And no country in history has treated its enemies better.
No country in history has treated those it's defeated in war better than this country.
Fact.

[LeftRight]

Until this time around..... Even so we're probably still better than most...

[LeLoup]

"Reputation, like life itself, is a complex affair that is difficult to sustain but simple to destroy."

That is what we did: destroy decades of efforts for...what exactly?
We shall pay the price for a long time to come.

[LinkSync]

“Higher” standards always supersede policy or law however derived.

This is one of those responsibilities implied by our belief in our Creator endowing us with inalienable rights.

Having those rights imposes a responsibility on each of us to act as a free person aming a free choice without fear to further and support an environment wherein those same “Higher” standards are upheld as a matter of course.

To do otherwise is to be craven and become the very thing we abjure.

Courage is not optional.
It is required of us all.
To be an American patriot is a very different than being a patriot in many other countries.

Here we ask only that you be willing to live, and die, for the convictions that our inalienable rights impose on our ethical underpinnings.

It is the “to die part” that everyone conveniently ignores even when making an argument, let alone when taking decisions about matters of import.

In all such matters it is the “to die part” that should be addressed in all honor, first.
Because to do less, is to leave off being informed by the meaning of being endowed with inalienable rights by our Creator.

We need to EXPECT honor and honesty and reward them even when uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Our culture now rewards Liars and Thieves instead.

We are left to choose, as always the way forward.
Can we be courageous and honorable in the doing?

[JerryLevy]

The moral measure is also how a society treats its own people. By that yardstick, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, N. Korea and the Palestinian Authority are as immoral as they come. How we treat the enemies that are trying to kill is a consideration, but the first responsibility of a society is to protect its people from wanton murderers and purveyors of genocide.

[LeftRight]

First, there are MANY better ways to protect our citizens than by torturing our prisoners.

Second, so the fact that those other countries do things like that means that WE can do things like that?? By that logic, I'm leaving to go rob a bank, since other people rob banks, which makes it okay for ME to do it!

[CM42]

All involved, including Powell, Cheney, Feinstein, who new of the tortures, but who did not publicly object or resign must be brought to trial now. We MUST reinforce what is right and wrong and there needs to be ramifications for those who were either spineless or evil.

[WorkingClass]

Hears the weird part. The people being tortured are not even our enemies. We Americans bomb and torture people indiscriminately just because thats the kind of people we are. Don't talk to me about 9/11. "We" did that also.

[longtimegone]

All the more reason why they ["We", to use your pronoun] would be desperate to torture someone into confessing. Someone must "volunteer" to take the heat and divert attention from those who made sure that it happened. Could it be that torture was, not so much to forestall future attacks, as it was to cover up for the perpetrators of this one?

[JerryLevy]

Lets see, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed the mastermind of 9/11 is not our enemy.

[jcorrington]

Am I correct in remembering that there is one lone SGT in prison now for the Abu Graib tortures? Is that not proof that taxes and the law are only for the little people.

[batguano]

There can never be healing or a return of our National Honor until the crimes and depravity of the torturers, those who sent them, and those who wrote the "justifications" for their actions are exposed and the responsible are brought to justice. This decision to not prosecute or hold to account is a grave error and not only maintains the status quo, but does not absolutely state in terms everyone on Earth can understand that the abuse of prisoners, denial of due process and human rights abuses, either by the US or any other will not be tolerated by. A future administration could repeat these acts of torture if they are not exposed fully and shown to be fundamentally at odds with our creed and promise.

We cannot defeat what we seek to change and end by becoming the same reality. The moral path is the most effective. Instead of isolating the "terrorists", we empower them, by resorting to the lowest human acts of cruelty. Justice is our goal and the way there is to hold the depraved to account. First on the list should be the odious and despicable John Yoo, who justified acts of torture carried out by others. It IS patriotic and righteous to treat "enemies" as you would have them treat you, and by doing so they become isolated and exposed as the extremists they are.

Accountability is essential to healing!

[Savanna]

As for trials and such to prevent this from happening again..does anyone remember Lt. Calli. They tried him and hear we are again..same subject same place. For this not to happen leadership from the top down has to respect the Rule of Law. The first Rule of Law in foreign affairs is don't make up stories as an excuse to invade a country that has not attacked your country. One lie begets another.

[schatsie]

the treatment of children and disabled is another measure of a Civil Society... and with one in 50 children homeless and our traumatic brain injury soldiers killing themselves, we should be ashamed....

[hulagirrrl]

As a child growing up in Germany after the war, I remember my family talking about how many soldier that were captured by US forces always commented on the humane treatment they received as POW's, contrary to let's say the Russian forces.
Shortly after the war the United States was instrumental in helping Germany rebuild. As a child all I heard was that America was always talked about with such awe, that my goal was to live in that country one day. I am living my dream, and am glad, but at the same time I see that a lot is not the same America I used to long for, and heard all of these stories about.
I so wished that the Iraq war had never happened, and worry about the many children growing up hating this country and the people for what one administration had done. It will probably take two generations to fix that one.

[MacQ]

When the Iraqi people finally feel safe enough to admit it, they will be as grateful as you are.
They have had to be very careful, with our democratic leadership screaming for a withdrawal deadline, they could have been left high and dry, and tortured as sympathizers. It has happened before.

[Gainsbourg69]

Clean up our act and stop trying to force people to be like us is what we should do.

[Gainsbourg69]

Ok, I'm all against being an agressor and against torture. But what do we do about the guys that don't give a crap about peace and harmony? How would you handle a guy that is so crazy that he'd blow himself up at a pub or a pizzeria? How do you counter that? In WWII they fought one army against the other. Now it is some random manic depressive who blows himself up and ,thirty other people go along with him. If they're fighting dirty, how does the Geneva convention relate to people like that?

[LeftRight]

You counter that the same way that you counter a man going crazy and killing a dozen people with a gun! You either kill him in the act, or you arrest him, try him, convict him, and put him in jail for the rest of his life!

[SharpDressedMan]

I am not for torture but what you suggest is a war of attrition and that doesn't work very well. Suicide bombers relish the thought of dying. They want to.

We have better chance of defeating terrorists when catching them alive and obtaining information such as their leadership, funding, suppliers, training, etc. When we learn who and where their leaders are we can go after the leadership, training camps, suppliers and seize their money. That's the best way to stop them.

The witness protection program was successful in bringing down the Mafia in this country because we caught enough mobsters and gave them a safer life in seclusion in return for testimony to prosecute mob bosses.

I believe there are different ways to extract information from people. Torture remains too controversial.

[surfcitysteven]

For those of you who REFUSE to understand, let me try one more time. This is not about the person who is tortured. It is about us! The Geneva convention should have no bearing on how we act, we should not be torturing. This is about our soul, not theirs.

[SharpDressedMan]

First and foremost, the moral measure of a civilization is in its treatment of its own people.

How many consider Idi Amin's Uganda, Rwanda, Cambodia (Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge), the Taliban, and pre WW2 Germany and Russia as civilizations?

[valkyrie607]

Civilization:

1. an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached.

2. those people or nations that have reached such a state.

3. any type of culture, society, etc., of a specific place, time, or group: Greek civilization.

4. the act or process of civilizing or being civilized: Rome's civilization of barbaric tribes was admirable.

5. cultural refinement; refinement of thought and cultural appreciation: The letters of Madame de Sévigné reveal her wit and civilization.

Anyone using the first three definitions listed here would consider all those nations "civilizations." Were they "civilized," as per the fourth and fifth definition? Perhaps, perhaps not. Having refined cultural tastes isn't necessarily incompatible with condoning torture and genocide.

All the nations you mentioned are indeed civilizations, under the commonly accepted definition of the word. The question is, what KIND of civilization are they? Authoritarian, cruel, and repressed? Or open, democratic, and egalitarian? That's the question America is trying to answer about itself right now.

[SharpDressedMan]

I believe there is another condition necessary for a society to be civilized. It must be comparable to or better than existing civilizations or societies.

An absolute gauge of a civilization is Maslow's Pyramid of Needs. If the majority of the population has its basic needs consistently met and is pursuing more noble and egalitarian objectives, it should be considered a civilization. Not everyone will achieve self-actualization. That salient characteristic is egalitarianism.

Saddam Hussein's Iraq belongs in my short list of barbaric countries. All the societies I listed, including Saddam's Iraq practiced genocide. That is not egalitarian behavior. Genocide and overt racism are not civil. None of those societies were ruled by democracies, they were ruled by ruthless totalitarians who defied rule of law, persecuted and killed their own people.

Definition #1 - Not all the countries I listed reached an "advanced state of human society". Where was the advanced society in the jungles of Uganda and Rwanda? The killing fields of Cambodia? The desolate cold tundra of Russia? The harsh terrain of Afghanistan? The only country that fits this definition is pre WW2 Germany. All listed countries tried to improve one part of the population at the expense of another. Civilized societies don't resort to such destructive measures.

Definition #5 - This would apply if thought and cultural refinement was as pervasive as possible throughout the population.

A society can lapse into an uncivilized phase then restore its civilization. This happened in some of the listed countries.

[vetwife]

They must be brought to prosecution. Is this the kind of
democracy Bush wanted to spread? This is not going away
and we cannot move forward until the past is dealt with.

A war criminal is a war ciminal and it does not matter what
flag the crimes are committed under. If you are not part of
the solution, then you are part of the problem. I do not believe
the American people )the majority) endorsed torture in their name.
If President Obama is truly representing the people, he must
bring the torturers to justice. FOR THE People of America.

[Yermammy]

Splendid article, Mr. Atran. We can't look past this until we address it fully and prosecute the guilty per treaties we have signed.

Convention Against Torture -- signed by Reagan in 1988, ratified in 1994 by Senate.

Geneva Conventions, Article 146:
Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts.

Charter of the International Tribunal at Nuremberg, Article 8:
The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.

U.S. Constitution, Article VI:
[A]ll Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.

Any more stupid questions, "conservatives"?