{"id":180,"date":"2006-09-25T10:27:29","date_gmt":"2006-09-25T15:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/25\/the-united-states-of-barbarism\/"},"modified":"2006-09-25T10:27:29","modified_gmt":"2006-09-25T15:27:29","slug":"the-united-states-of-barbarism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/25\/the-united-states-of-barbarism\/","title":{"rendered":"The United States of Barbarism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The <\/strong>Future of Freedom Foundation<\/strong><\/a> is\u00a0shotgunning out today\u00a0an\u00a0oped I wrote on the torture deal. \u00a0<\/p>\n

FFF is one of the few places that has remained true to its principles since 9\/11.\u00a0 FFF chief Jacob Hornberger\u00a0refused to compromise or kowtow no matter how high Bush’s approval ratings rose.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United States of Barbarism<\/strong>
\nby James Bovard, September 25, 2006<\/p>\n

The U.S. Senate is cutting a deal with President Bush to make America a banana republic. Last week, three senators reached an agreement with the White House that will de facto permit the CIA to continue torturing people around the world. And the deal will prevent anyone \u2014 including Bush administration officials \u2014 from being held liable for the torture.<\/p>\n

This is latest sign that our elected representatives in Washington believe that the federal government deserves absolute power over everyone in the world. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned recently that Bush\u2019s efforts to gut the Geneva Conventions would cause the world to “doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

But more important, the Senate-White House torture deal should cause Americans to doubt the moral basis of their entire government. After 9\/11, many Bush administration officials seemed determined to use any and every means to bludgeon people suspected of terrorism or terrorist intent. The Justice Department delivered to the White House a memo in August 2002 explaining why Bush was not bound by the War Crimes Act or the Anti-Torture Act.<\/p>\n

The memo began by largely redefining torture out of existence. It then explained why even if someone died during torture, the torturer might not be guilty if he felt the torture was necessary to prevent some worse evil. The memo concluded by revealing that the president has the right to order torture because he is above the law, at least during wartime (even if Congress has not declared war).<\/p>\n

The Justice Department declared that the president may effectively exempt government officials from federal criminal law, noting that \u201cCongress cannot compel the President to prosecute outcomes taken pursuant to the President\u2019s own constitutional authority. If Congress could do so, it could control the President\u2019s authority through the manipulation of federal criminal law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo\u2019s absolutism would have brought a smile to despots everywhere: \u201cAs the Supreme Court has recognized … the President enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his Commander-in-Chief authority and in conducting operations against hostile forces…. we will not read a criminal statute as infringing on the President\u2019s ultimate authority in these areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, the \u201ccommander-in-chief\u201d label automatically swallows up the rest of the Constitution. Yet, as Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh observed, \u201cIf the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the doctrine that the Senate-White House deal largely codifies. It will be up to the president to declare which interrogation methods U.S. agents can use \u2014 almost regardless of the Geneva Conventions. It will be up to the president to decree who will face \u201crough\u201d interrogation.<\/p>\n

The details of the torture deal vivify how our politicians no longer give a darn about maintaining even a pretense of due process. The agreement will permit the use of coerced confessions in military tribunals \u2014 turning the judicial clock back to the 1600s. The Washington Post noted that the agreement permits \u201cdefense attorneys to challenge the use of hearsay information obtained through coercive interrogations in distant countries only if they can prove it is unreliable.\u201d Thus, there is a presumption of correctness to whatever accusation is bludgeoned out of people in secret prisons around the world.
\nAnd it will be almost impossible to disprove an accusation when a defense lawyer is not allowed to question \u2014 or perhaps even know \u2014 who made the charge.<\/p>\n

But that is fair enough for the U.S. Congress.<\/p>\n

The New York Times noted that the agreement \u201cwould impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce.\u201d Thus, it will be impossible for the vast majority of detainees at Guantanamo to challenge their detention.<\/p>\n

The unverified accusations of U.S. government officials will still be the highest law of the land. The habeas corpus rights that go back to the Magna Charta of 1215 will be null and void under the agreement for many, if not most, detainees.<\/p>\n

The torture scandal shows what happens when politicians and political appointees are permitted to redefine barbarism out of existence. If the government can effectively claim a right to torture, then all other limits on government power are practically irrelevant. What would it take to make the public acquiesce to the torture of Americans? Would simply applying an \u201codious\u201d label (such as \u201ccult member\u201d at Waco, or \u201cMuslim\u201d with John Walker Lindh) to the victims be sufficient?<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation is\u00a0shotgunning out today\u00a0an\u00a0oped I wrote on the torture deal. \u00a0 FFF is one of the few places that has remained true to its principles since 9\/11.\u00a0 FFF chief Jacob Hornberger\u00a0refused to compromise or kowtow no matter how high Bush’s approval ratings rose.\u00a0 The United States of Barbarism by James Bovard, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[22,659,6,10,32,17,12],"class_list":{"0":"post-180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","8":"tag-bovard","9":"tag-bush","10":"tag-bush-betrayal","11":"tag-elective-dictatorship","12":"tag-torture"},"yoast_head":"\nThe United States of Barbarism - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/25\/the-united-states-of-barbarism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The United States of Barbarism - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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