The antidote to extremism

In his speech at the American Enterprise Institute last Thursday, former vice president Cheney vigorously and angrily defended the previous administration’s detainee and interrogation policies.
I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.
Unfortunately for Mr. Cheney, these statements are flatly contradicted by the facts.
Former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan has already dismissed the affirmation that all other efforts failed. Furthermore, there is no evidence that torturing detainees prevented any attacks, let alone saved hundreds of thousands of lives, as Mr. Cheney claims
That the program did constitute torture, and thus violated US and international law, is also obvious.
In fact, after World War II, the Tokyo War Crime Trials convicted several Japanese for having water boarded US and allied soldiers.
After the 1898 Spanish-American War, US soldiers were court-martialed for having water boarded Filipino rebels.
Mr. Cheney’s defense is predictable. He is attempting to steer the debate away from the program’s ethical and legal dimensions. Instead, he seeks to transform the issue into a purely political one, a debate on policy differences, and thus accuses his opponents, and President Obama of trying to criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.
Mr. Cheney deliberately misses the point.
In a democracy, political differences are natural, and settled at the ballot box.
What we are dealing with here, is not a difference of opinions concerning the former administration’s detainee and interrogation policies.
It is the immoral and illegal nature of these policies that is being denounced.
Just because it was MM Bush and Cheney’s responsibility to protect the American people (9/11 was a tragic failure to fulfill that responsibility) does not mean that they had the authority to launch a program that violated US and international law, and was also immoral.
For both of these gentlemen had another responsibility besides protecting the American people. It was to protect and defend the constitution.
It was their dereliction of duty in this exercise that is the issue here, and not some political differences of opinion. The latter are resolved election time (and they were last November), the former in a court of law…
In their zeal to prevent a second attack on US soil, the former administration adopted policies that violated US and international law.
It is for this that the former president and vice president should be held accountable.
That prospect, naturally, does not please Mr. Cheney, and as such, he now seeks to portray the former administration’s policies as the only ones feasible:
But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed…There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance.
According to this logic, you do whatever it takes, the end justifies the means, torture your enemies if you deem it necessary, or surrender to them. There is no other option.
Incidentally, though Mr. Cheney continues to refer to Guantanamo detainees as hardened terrorists, a 2008 McClatchy investigation concluded that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
And yet, you do not fight extremism with extreme methods, you do not detain people indefinitely, you do not torture them, not if you believe in justice and democracy.
Mr. Cheney claims that these terrorists hate us because of our values.
Do they?
Perhaps it is not that they hate our values, but our hypocrisy, and propensity to lecture the world about justice and democracy, all the while ignoring these values, and supporting those who brazenly violate them, if it is in our national interests, when it is convenient.
America antagonizes, infuriates and alienates the rest of the world when it fails to live up to its professed values.
That is why the most effective way to fight extremism is simply to uphold our own values, and not let fear rashly lead us astray and repudiate them.
It is never a good time to compromise with our values.
On the contrary, they have been so successful in establishing free, vibrant and prosperous societies on all continents.
This is the antidote to extremism, not resorting to cruelty and injustice to neutralize a cruel and unjust enemy .
MM Bush and Cheney have a lot to answer for, but first and foremost, for having betrayed our most cherished values, and undermined the cause of freedom and democracy around the world.
Though Mr. Cheney desperately seeks to avoid this debate and its obvious legal ramifications, and accuses all those who question the nature of these policies of weakening the nation’s resolve and capacity to defend itself, and thus strengthening the enemy, this debate needs to take place.
These policies need to be investigated, fairly and impartially, if that is still possible, and if US and international laws have indeed been violated, then those responsible, and including the former vice president if necessary, must be prosecuted.
That would be a powerful signal sent to the rest of the world: that America is indeed a nation of laws, and that no one is above the law, not even Mr. Cheney…