A retired Army General who spent the last 18 years of his career training military interrogators is speaking out about the need for legislation that will put an end to the kind of abuses of prisoners that is happening at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The Salt Lake City Tribune interviewed Army General David Irvine who retired in 2002. Here are the last few paragraphs:
The Guardian also published an interesting article on this topic today. It advises Britain to stay out of the "dirty war" that is being waged "above the rule of law" against suspected terrorists in U.S. custody.Nonetheless, in the classes Irvine taught, there was always someone who felt the Field Guide's provisions didn't go far enough. "There are always going to be those who feel that the ends justifies the means," he said. "Those who feel the training they got was too Mickey Mouse for the circumstances they find themselves in."
Acting on such seductive thinking, he said, results in the forfeiture of "any moral objection to similar kinds of treatment."
And that scares him most of all.
"We've lowered the bar ourselves - if X-Y-Z is OK for us to do, it's OK for the same treatment to be meted out to our people if they're captured," he said."It's not rocket science; it's the Golden Rule."
1 comment:
Randy,
You ask, "Would the country's political leadership really want to conduct this war with a commitment to justice?"
I'm skeptical. I think we define justice one way for ourselves and another way for our adversaries.
Our double standard is destroying our credibility both in our own eyes -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- and in the eyes of the world.
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