[
LETTERS
]
Commentary
The following personal commentary is in response to the profi le on U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales titled “Open to Interpretation” that ran in the winter 2006 issue of Sallyport.
Sallyport’s recent article about Alberto may refl ect Gonzales’s wholehearted
No wonder Gonzales equivocated. all civilians. Add another 240,000 lives
Gonzales provides an opportunity embrace of the perverse vocabulary
No wonder so little stock now is placed lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Can
for everyone connected with Rice put into circulation by the torture
in the administration’s claim that it
slaughter of civilians on this scale be
to explore the values we live by. I memo. Cavalierly declaring the Geneva
has, out of the sheer goodness of its
wished away by observing, as bickering
welcomed the publication of the Conventions to be obsolete, the memo’s
heart, upheld the humane standards
children do, that “they started it?”
Gonzales article, but along with it authors claimed to fi nd in other laws
of the Geneva Conventions even while
In 1964–65, as a lieutenant in the
came an honorifi c electronic banner an authoritative consensus that would
contending that the conventions lack
U.S. Navy and advisor to the assistant
on the Rice website that I found defi ne torture as a crime but also
legal force and are counterproductive
operations offi cer of the Vietnamese
shocking. The banner, visually quite make it a vanishingly rare event. Only
given the “new paradigm” of warfare
Navy, I never would have believed that
mesmerizing, displayed a photograph “extreme acts” and “the most egregious
ushered in by 9/11. People who play
my country would one day ridicule the
of Gonzales being sworn in as attorney conduct” would qualify. “Physical pain
fast and loose with words like torture
Geneva Conventions, demonize ordinary
general of the United States by his amounting to torture must be equivalent
are not to be trusted.
foot soldiers as unlawful combatants,
political patron, President George W. in intensity to the pain accompanying
Until the Supreme Court began
and incarcerate them without due
Bush. Although no text accompanied serious physical injury, such as organ
dismantling the administration’s
process. Am I proud today that a Rice
the image, the visual message was failure, impairment of bodily function,
ill conceived prison system in the
graduate played an important role in
unmistakable: We at Rice like George or even death” the memo reads. Having
Hamdi, Rasul, and Hamdan cases,
forging the legal and bureaucratic
Bush and are proud of Alberto Gonzales. thus shrunken the word torture to a
anyone suspected of any sort of
tools that transformed Guantanamo
Given the limitless diversity of a global shadow of its customary meaning, the
linkage to terrorism was subject to
Naval Station into a prison camp and
audience potentially reached by Rice’s memo narrowed it even more by invoking
secret incarceration at Guantanamo
interrogation center that the Supreme
website, however, there is reason to the necessity of “specifi c intent.” If a
or elsewhere without a shred of due
Court now fi nds unlawful and even our
wonder if it was truly in the interest defendant accused of torture “acted
process. Worse, prisoners were liable to
closest allies call loathsome? No.
of the university to bestow honors knowing that severe pain or suffering
be subjected to interrogation practices
The Al Qaeda attack of 9/11 was a
on Gonzales and his patron in this was reasonably likely to result from his
that, in the vocabulary of any candid,
despicable deed, and in its wake, my
fashion. Is there, in fact, anything actions, but no more, he would have
plainspoken person, unquestionably
countrymen never again will rest easy
remotely like a consensus of respect acted only with general intent [not
qualify as torture. The justifi cations
in the free security that wide oceans
and admiration for Gonzales on this specifi c intent],” and therefore not be
commonly given for stripping stateless
have bestowed on us. From now on,
campus or among its graduates? Is guilty of torture. The memo went still soldiers of even the most elementary
Americans will have to realize that
he a fi tting emblem of the values we further: “Even if an interrogation method human rights are threefold: they do not
war is not just something that happens
cherish? These are controversial, arguably were to violate section 2340A wear uniforms, they do not distinguish
overseas but also may be experienced
many-sided questions. All I can report the statute would be unconstitutional between military and civilian targets,
on our own soil. Most of the world’s
are my own views. if it impermissibly encroached on the and they are neither soldiers embedded
peoples had to acknowledge this lesson
At Gonzales’s confi rmation hearing president’s constitutional power to in a chain of command that takes
centuries ago. Of all the blunders
in January 2005, senators of both conduct a military campaign.” responsibility for their conduct nor
committed by the Bush administration,
parties pressed him about torture, The main purpose of the torture memo citizens of an established state that signs
the greatest in my eyes is that it turned
for the Abu Ghraib photos were was to specify the level of brutality treaties ensuring civilized treatment of
its back on the rich Western heritage
fresh in everyone’s mind, and the that would maximize intelligence yield, prisoners. In short, they do not make
of humane laws, rights, practices, and
infamous “torture memo” of 2002, while stopping just short of criminal war like Westerners. They have no
conventions meant to minimize, or at
solicited from Department of Justice liability. Never imagining that their aircraft carriers, ballistic missiles, or
least set limits, to the unspeakable
lawyers by Gonzales acting in his work would become public knowledge, tanks; they are third-world irregulars
horrors that all parties, no matter
role as counsel to the president, the authors categorized aggressive who, in combat, improvise, making do
how well intentioned, are liable to
had, by that time, been leaked to but acceptable interrogation methods with the resources at their disposal.
commit in the heat of combat. As I
the press. His testimony seemed with a revealing trio of words that they Is this grounds for torturing them? For
write, a couple of weeks after the
evasive. Although he stated in his used again and again with no sense of treating them as war criminals?
Hamdan decision, the nation waits
opening remarks that “America stands irony: cruel, inhuman, and degrading. It wasn’t in Vietnam, 40 some years
as Congress debates whether to make
against and will not tolerate torture These three words defi ne what the ago. There, too, the United States was
that blunder permanent and clothe it
under any circumstances,” under Bush administration came to regard at war with irregular guerilla soldiers
in legitimacy or reinstate the Geneva
skeptical questioning, he claimed as acceptable. Imagine that you come who wore no uniform and pledged
Conventions. The fate of the nation
that the torture memo was “just the under suspicion of withholding valuable allegiance to no state. Yet to the best
hangs in the balance.
opinion of the justice department’s intelligence and the jailor invites you of my knowledge, no one in Washington
Offi ce of Legal Counsel.” Then he to choose between two options: You ever considered putting America in the
Thomas Haskell
Samuel G. McCann Professor of
abruptly reversed himself, saying that can submit to torture, or you will be business of routinely torturing suspects.
History, Department of History
it was the “binding interpretation,” humiliated, treated like an animal, and As for sparing civilians, the United States
Rice University
before speaking of it, only minutes experience cruelty so severe that it puts does not occupy high moral ground. In
later, as “an arguable interpretation you on the road to organ failure. Could Vietnam, we selectively assassinated
of the law.” anything be more Orwellian? The bar of civic leaders whose politics offended
What appears to be flagrant decency and moral responsibility could us. In World War II, the fi rebombing of
doubletalk and deception actually hardly have been set lower. Tokyo alone took 100,000 lives, nearly
Spring ’06 Fall ’05 5
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56