Army Manuel Omits Geneva Convention’s Ban On Humiliating Prisoners

Posted on June 5, 2006

Here is a reaction. Can you guess who said it?

The United States is a rogue nation that practices torture and detainee abuse and does not follow the most basic principles of the Geneva Conventions. It is inviolation of human rights agreements and the U.N. Convention against torture. It is legitimizing torture by every disgusting regime on the planet. This is a policy mandated by the president and his closest advisers. This is the signal being sent from the commander-in-chief to his troops: your enemy can be treated beyond the boundaries of what the U.S. has always abided by. When you next read of an atrocity of war-crime or victim of torture by the U.S., just keep in mind who made this possible.

Who said it? If you guessed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, you are not alone. However, the correct answer would be the “conservative” blogger Andrew Sullivan.
Quite an overreaction, wouldn’t you say?

Jeff Goldstein puts it all in perspective:

I think our tendency to define down torture to include “humiliation”, along with “humiliation’s” effectiveness as an interrogation tactic against an honor and shame culture, has precipitated the Pentagon’s changes moreso than some slippage of our own moral authority—which is to say, I think the changes simply pragmatic, both as a response to a Western culture so steeped in PC posturing that has lost the ability to recognize torture and distinguish it from other (legal) techniques for gleaning information from enemy captures who are not part of some standing army (and so should not be given Geneva Convention treatment).

Which, of course, marks me once again as an “enemy of American values,” and—to believe Sullivan, will make me at least partially responsible for the next war crime or atrocity you hear has been perpetrated by a US soldier.

Because US soldiers are simply automatons who are unable to make the fine distinctions Sullivan fancies himself not only capable of, but a prominent spokesman for. Me, my knuckles drag. So I stubborly persist in my ludicrous assertion that humiliation and torture are different animals, and that to conflate the two is only, in the long wrong, to diminish torture and raise discomfort (”I’m offended!”) to the same level.

Make sure to read the whole thing.
I may have jumped in over my head in this debate. It is a sticky one. No one wants our military smeared and accused of torture and murder. This only undermines our credibility around the world. However, it is important in the debate that we make critical distinctions, and be realistic about these serious situations. If one wants to make a reasonable debate about this, by all means do so. However, it is my opinon that overreactions like calling the U.S. a rouge nation, Bush the equivalent of Hitler, etc., etc., only hurt your argument and people are a lot less likely to actually listen to what you have to say.

» Filed Under News, War On Terror

Trackback URL

Comments

One Response to “Army Manuel Omits Geneva Convention’s Ban On Humiliating Prisoners”

kerwin_brown on June 5th, 2006 1:23 pm

No Cruel and unusual punishment sounds like a good definition. As far as I know humiliation did not fall under the definition of cruel or unusual until Freud came along. I believe the best way is to let the people of the United States and of each state when apropriate decide what they consider cruel and unusual and not the International community.