ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

This is a time for reflection, not retribution... At a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. The national greatness that you so courageously and capably uphold is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence.

The king of change, addressing the CIA. Taken from this article.

Well. I should think those former torturers have by now completely stopped all those naughty things that they were doing. The king of change has said we don't do torture any more. The king of change has said that we must look forward not backwards, heads held high. That is, after all, what makes us american1, and that is what makes us Special2. We torture with dignity, we torture with capability and courageousness - and we also torture with impunity.

I wonder how the king of change would respond if the President of Russia or Iran announced that all their naughty (former) torturers were not really naughty, after all. They were only doing what the Russian and Iranian legal teams told them was acceptable, and the legal teams were really doing their best to understand a very scary state of terrorist affairs. So let's let the world look forward, not backwards (say Ahmadinajad and Putin).

In fact, and while we're at it, let's also not look backwards at those nasty things that the Taliban, al Quaeda and the Iraqi resistance have been doing to American soldiers as well. They surely didn't mean it, and were probably only acting according to their legal advisors.

Ch-ch-ch-changed behaviour in the prison cells?

One hopes that looking forwards will indeed reveal a brand new world of prisoner-guard relations (not that we shall recognise its newness if we refuse completely to look back). But can you imagine: 'Good morning Mr Zubaydah. I trust you slept better than the previous 2,573 nights? No insects here, and a bit more roomy than the confinement box! A headache? How bizarre. Perhaps you had an adverse reaction to my application of the wall treatment3, 36 times in a row. I'll bring you a pillow.'

Same old judges, same old prison guards, and same old, same old legal advisors - some of them now federal judges. Same old Convention against Torture (CAT), which - believe it or not - the USA has signed and ratified, which stipulates that

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

So would that not include indicating to prospective torturers that any instances of torture will be treated severely, and brought to court? Or does this article allow room for the head of state to claim that “[I]t is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution,”?

OK, so you repeatedly hit him in the belly, smashed his shoulder blades against the wall, all while he was naked and sleep deprived. But the legal advisors said it wasn't torture, so how were you to know? Walk free, my man.

The king of kings could do worse than to read further into the Convention. The third part of Article 2 would tell him that:

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

And maybe he could glance at the part in the middle as well, the second part of Article 2:

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Woopsie.

The gift of impunity

What on earth went through Obama's head when he first saw the memos? They are shocking beyond belief. We knew, of course, that such practices were being employed, but I had not imagined the careful legal arguments, the elaborate technical justifications that were being constructed to allow the USA to keep up the pretence that this was an acceptable (and necessary) way of treating other human beings.

The trouble with impunity is not just that the torturers go free, in this case even remaining in the same jobs, with the same temptations and inclinations to do what they were doing before. That is bad enough: there is a strong risk that the behaviour will repeat, and it also sends a message to others who may be tempted, that such behaviour will be forgiven and forgotten. Nor is the trouble with impunity necessarily that 'we' have committed ourselves to 'take ... measures to prevent acts of torture', and not to engage in torture, so we are legally (not to speak of morally) bound to do so.

No: what is really morally disgusting about impunity, is that it takes no account of the victims. We can perhaps conceive of certain cases when a genuinely new regime overturns an old one, reverses all previous injustices and bad practices - and then makes a decision to look forwards rather than back, to grant amnesty to former torturers. South Africa at the breakup of apartheid was perhaps such an example. But there is a major difference between that, and the 'new' Obama regime which calls on us to forget about the past. In the first case, it was the apartheid regime's victims who (sort of) came to power, and they then (sort of) took the noble decision to refrain from indulging in victor's justice. In the second case, the case of American today, the victims have not even been consulted. In fact they are still in the cells, still being watched over by those who have brutalised them, and still untried for any crime, 7 years on. Still innocent, according to the law.

It is surely only victims who have any sort of entitlement to decide that those who have victimised them should be forgiven. Obama has absolutely no right to do so: no right to praise the members of the CIA for noble and patriotic services in torturing, no right to deny the victims of that patriotic service recognition, compensation or any form of justice. No right to act the noble emperor who will forgive but gently chastise public servants for brutal acts which affected others, not him at all.

Read the memos. Or read the few extracts that I am posting here.

• 1. I'm not really american, but he is emperor of the world, and Britain is clearly a very special country. We fight his wars and fight to be allowed to fight them, we do his bidding on bailouts, and our press worships at his feet. Most importantly - we have a special intelligence arrangement, by which we get to see all torture memos put out by US officials (and they ours).
• 2. 'Obama said that upholding American values and ideals in the face of those enemies is "what makes the United States special and what makes you [who work for the CIA] special." I'm not convinced that the ideals and values upheld by American Secret Service personnel are so very different from the values upheld by Secret Service personnel in any other country. But he clearly thinks so.
• 3. '... For walling, a flexible false wall will be constructed. The individual is placed with his heels touching the wall. The interrogator pulls the individual forward and then quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall. It is the individual's shoulder blades that hit the wall. During this motion, the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a collar effect to help prevent whiplash... The false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock or surprise in the individual...' from the Bybee memo