Interrogation and Terror

There is a debate swelling between conservatives and liberals regarding the treatment of suspected terrorists. At the behest of the omnipotent Supreme Court, President Bush is asking Congress to define more clearly Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions which addresses the treatment of prisoners of war. The objective of Common Article 3 is to prohibit the torturing of prisoners at the hands of their captors. It is well known that Common Article 3 originally applied only to captives of traditional military forces, that is to say, uniformed soldiers from a legitimate nation-state. The Supreme Court however decided (declared) that Common Article 3 should be applied to al-Qaida and other terror operatives who flaunt all traditional rules of war: they blend into the civilian population thereby refusing to clearly distinguish themselves from the general public, they hide in and fire from mosques and hospitals, they intentionally target innocents, and they belong to no clearly defined nation. We are facing, in this asymmetrical war, manifestations of a new type of enemy truly unlike anything we've seen before. The enemies we face on the battlefield are savages, unmatched in their brutality and unscrupulousness.

Bush has repeatedly insisted that we do not torture our prisoners. I believe him. However we do make use of tactics that some may consider rough; tactics that would no doubt offend weak-kneed, effeminate liberals. We do make use of legitimate, alternative measures with interrogation to obtain extremely valuable information. That we have not had an attack in over five years says that we must be doing something right. In fact, several terror plots have been interrupted as a direct result of our intelligence gathering and interrogation tactics. The CIA is insisting that interrogation parameters need to be clearly defined for them so they will not be hauled before judges for the alleged torture of detainees. In response to the Supreme Court's foolish ruling, Bush has petitioned Congress to hammer out and crystallize acceptable interrogation techniques to avoid embarrassing court spectacles involving our interrogators. Liberals and a handful of renegade Republican Senators like John McCain argue that we shouldn't touch Common Article 3 because it would, they speculate, create a moral equivalence between al-Qaida and the United States. Torture would be sanctioned by the US and we would sink to the moral depths of the very terrorists who attacked us on 9-11. This kind of moral equivalence between the US and terror cells is truly sickening and should be rejected outright. It starts with a premise that I don’t readily accept. Liberals also argue that, if we tweak Common Article 3 in our dealings with prisoners, our enemies could follow our precedent and adjust the Geneva Conventions to suit their needs as well in the event that an American is captured. Those who hold our prisoners will look at our example and claim that they have the right to modify their own standards of interrogation imposed on them by their signing onto the Geneva Convention. This will, in the end, put Americans at risk. The problem with this argument is that the enemies we are concerned with in the war on terror have already tortured, beheaded, mutilated and slaughtered captive Americans. Assuming they even know about the Geneva Conventions, they certainly could care less about abiding by them. McCain argues that the Geneva Conventions have governed Western POW detention and interrogation standards for decades and ipso facto, shouldn't be changed. This kind of static thinking is deeply troubling, especially in light of 9-11 and the evolving nature of warfare. That something is old and "time-tested" should not be the sole criteria for upholding a particular policy. If we've learned anything, it is that we must continually update our tactics to stay one-step ahead of our enemies. We should take our leaders at their word (an almost impossible task for some) and trust that we are not torturing our captives, à la the regime of Saddam Hussein. At the same time, we must allow for effective, albeit rough, interrogation tactics to obtain the life-saving information we need.