Vetoing Humanity: Bush and Torture

That hood looks eerily familiar.

Fyodor Dostoevsky wisely once remarked that, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” By this, he meant that the extent to which humanity is extended to those too weak to demand it— the tired, the wretched, the huddled masses—that is the most precise moral measurement of a civilization. Basically, the most important mark of a civil society is how it treats those convicted of crimes.

By this standard, we have failed. Each day reveals more information about the despicable behavior occurring in United States’ detention facilities all across the world: hooding, stripping, exposure to extreme temperatures, water submersions, starvations—these are all part of a detainee’s daily regiment. These interrogation tactics have too often led to cases of vicious beatings, sexual degradation, and near drowning of prisoners by United States’ soldiers. In fact, recently, former Army captain, Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne Division, testified that, despite what Pentagon propagandists may have you believe, Abu Ghraib was no anomaly; systematic beating and mistreatment is the normal course of business in United States’ detention facilities.

We all know this. Well, John McCain, a torture victim himself in Vietnam, recently sponsored a long-overdue legislative amendment to do something about it. The amendment unequivocally prohibits “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment” of prisoners in Guantánamo bay and other detention facilities. Last week, the senate voted overwhelmingly (90 to 9) in support of the amendment, making a profound call for civilized values of humanity, lawfulness, and decency.

George Bush this weekend, in a profound declaration of brutality (and, for that matter, savagery, by our aforementioned standards) threatened to affirm his moral vacancy and use the first veto of his five year tenor as president, a veto which would prevent the allocation of much needed 440 billion dollars to our troops in Iraq, to come out in favor of torture and inhumane treatment. As the Washington Post sums up, “in effect, he threatens to declare to the world his administration's moral bankruptcy.” Amen.

Last Thursday, our president interestingly remarked that, “[Terrorists and tyrants are] unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity, or by the rules of warfare.” Does anyone aside from Bush fail to see the hypocrisy? The dividing line between civilization and savagery, between democracy and tyranny, might become clear simply by looking into our prison system—is our president willing to acknowledge this?

Newspaper article on this topic: Cruel and Unusual Punishment