{"id":21693,"date":"2025-06-30T11:40:54","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T15:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21693"},"modified":"2025-06-30T12:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T16:14:10","slug":"the-good-intentions-license-for-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/30\/the-good-intentions-license-for-tyranny\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Intentions License for Tyranny"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Hooded Torture Victim at Abu Ghraib. Photo via Voice of America (public domain)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Good Intentions License for Tyranny<\/strong>\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

\u201cHe who saves his country violates no law,\u201d tweeted President Trump in February. He was echoing a line often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. His supporters were electrified by Trump\u2019s tacit invocation of a right to boundless power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Trump presidency is already spurring legal battles across the nation. It is far too soon to speculate on Trump\u2019s final win\/loss record in federal courts. But Americans should be aware of how the entire judicial process is skewed against holding officialdom liable for its crimes.<\/p>\n

Whitewashing torture<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most stunning example of federal impunity is the whitewashing of the Bush administration torture scandal.<\/strong> President George W. Bush unleashed a worldwide torture regime that left victims dead and maimed around the globe. But federal officials and federal judges made sure that not a single torture policymaker or CIA torturer faced any penalty for their barbarity.<\/p>\n

Torture policymakers seemed to recognize only one possible adverse consequence from getting rough with their targets. \u201cIf the detainee dies, you\u2019re doing it wrong,\u201d wrote Jonathan Fredman, the top lawyer for the CIA Counterterrorist Center in 2002. A congressional hearing in June 2008 revealed that \u201cC.I.A. lawyers believed they had found a legal loophole permitting the agency to use \u2018cruel, inhuman or degrading\u2019 methods overseas as long as they did not amount to torture,\u201d the New York Times<\/em> reported. Fredman warned other federal lawyers involved with sanctifying the interrogation regime: \u201cIf someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental.\u201d<\/p>\n

The official attitude toward killing detainees was stark early on in the case of Gul Rahman. He was captured by U.S. agents in October 2002 and was suspected of being a militant. The CIA subjected Rahman to \u201c48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment.\u201d Rahman died in November 2002 after effectively freezing to death \u201cafter being stripped naked from the waist down and shackled to a cold cement wall in the Salt Pit, where temperatures were approximately 36\u00b0F.\u201d Rather than face prosecution for killing Rahman, the primary CIA interrogator was recommended for a $2,500 cash award for his \u201cconsistently superior work,\u201d according to a 2014 Senate report.<\/p>\n

For government officials, the decisive legal question is not what federal law prohibits but what behavior will be punished. What happens when feds violate the law of the land?<\/p>\n

Whitewashing torture<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s legal system allows presumed good intentions to almost always exonerate the worst abuses by government officials. As long as they deny criminal intent, they will almost always be absolved by their fellow government employees.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Intentions Test for government officials becomes almost a tautology. People work for the government because they want to help other people. Therefore, when some government official violated some legal technicality, did he intend to do something bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Thanks to Peggy_Marco and Pixabay for image<\/p><\/div>\n

The Bush administration exploited this presumption to argue in secret memos that U.S. government agents could not be found guilty of torture regardless of their conduct. Bush-appointed lawyers showed how easily even the most aggressive interrogators could be free of a torturous intent:<\/p>\n

“Because Section 2340 [of the federal Anti-Torture Act] requires that a defendant act with the specific intent to inflict severe pain, the infliction of such pain must be the defendant\u2019s precise objective. If the defendant acted knowing that severe pain or suffering was reasonably likely to result from his actions, but no more, he would have acted only with general intent. As a theoretical matter, therefore, knowledge alone that a particular result is certain to occur does not constitute specific intent…. Thus, even if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith.’<\/p>\n

The memo offered the following illustration: \u201cIn the context of mail fraud, if an individual honestly believes that the material transmitted is truthful, he has not acted with the required intent to deceive or mislead.\u201d Mailing brochures on bogus cholesterol cures helped set the standard for government employees who maimed detainees who did not confess quickly enough. The memo assured would-be torturers and torture supervisors: \u201cA good faith belief need not be a reasonable one.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Good-faith torture<\/strong><\/p>\n

Such legal reasoning spawned a world-wide epidemic of \u201cgood-faith torture.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Justice Department memo recited the damage of 9\/11 in order to justify the presumption that torture would prevent similar carnage: \u201cGiven the massive destruction and loss of life caused by the September 11 attacks, it is reasonable to believe that information gained from al Qaeda personnel could prevent attacks of a similar (if not greater) magnitude from occurring in the United States.\u201d But a 6,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee report finally released in 2014 concluded that the torture failed to produce any information that prevented terror attacks or saved American lives.<\/p>\n

In one of the most stunning assertions, the Justice Department stressed that even intentionally killing people during an interrogation might be okay: “The necessity defense may prove especially relevant in the current circumstances. First, the defense is not limited to certain types of harms. Therefore, the harm inflicted by necessity may include intentional homicide, so long as the harm avoided is greater (i.e., preventing more deaths).<\/p>\n

“Second, it must actually be the defendant\u2019s intention to avoid the greater harm….<\/p>\n

“Third, if the defendant reasonably believed that the lesser harm was necessary, even if, unknown to him, it was not, he may still avail himself of the defense….<\/p>\n

“Clearly, any harm that might occur during an interrogation would pale to insignificance compared to the harm avoided by preventing such an attack, which could take hundreds or thousands of lives.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Justice Department preemptively exonerated U.S. government officials who violate the Anti-Torture Act: \u201cIf a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate Section 2340A, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network.\u201d The Justice Department did not explain why preventing a catastrophic attack is the only reason why a suspect might be maimed during interrogation.<\/p>\n

The memo sanctified boundless power by stressing the uniqueness of the post\u20139\/11 world: \u201c<\/strong>The situation in which these issues arise is unprecedented in recent American history…. [These] attacks aimed at critical Government buildings in the nation\u2019s capital and landmark buildings in its financial center.\u201d But President James Madison did not announce that the U.S. government was obliged to start torturing people after the British burned down Washington in 1814.<\/p>\n

After the Abu Ghraib photos became public, Bush continually stressed America\u2019s good intentions as proof that the U.S. government did not torture. On June 22, 2004, Bush responded to criticism: \u201cLet me make very clear the position of my government and our country…. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.\u201d Bush continually recited his praise about American values whenever he was challenged about the torture he authorized.<\/p>\n

Justifying torture<\/strong><\/p>\n

In late 2005, 18 months after leaked memos revealed the Bush administration\u2019s belief that the Anti-Torture Act was null, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibited the use of \u201ccruel, inhumane, or degrading\u201d interrogation methods. Top Justice Department officials responded to the new law with a secret internal memo declaring that all the interrogation methods currently being used \u2014 head slapping, waterboarding, frigid temperatures, and blasting with loud music to assure sleep deprivation \u2014 were not \u201ccruel, inhumane or degrading.\u201d The secret torture memos, written by assistant attorney general Steven Bradbury, relied on \u201ca Supreme Court finding that only conduct that \u2018shocks the conscience\u2019\u201d would go too far.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Other administration officials used the same standard to exonerate themselves. Vice President Dick Cheney, who largely dictated the Bush policy, was asked in a television interview, \u201cWhat\u2019s the president\u2019s prerogative in the cruel treatment of prisoners?\u201d Cheney invoked the \u201cshocks the conscience\u201d standard, and then mentioned that \u201cwhat shocks the conscience\u201d is to some extent \u201cin the eye of the beholder.\u201d This standard leaves it up to government officials to decide whether they are personally offended about how they are using their power. If a policy does not shock a politicians\u2019 conscience, it must be okay.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cshock the conscience\u201d test becomes a slippery slope. The more abuses government commits, the more numb people become. What would have been condemned one year evokes shrugs and yawns a few years later. This becomes Barbarism on the Installment Plan. Cheney publicly declared his approval for simulated drowning of detainees, even though the U.S. government had considered this a war crime for over a century.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2007, the New York Times <\/em>detailed how, after 9\/11, the CIA constructed an interrogation program by \u201cconsulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture.\u201d For decades, the U.S. government condemned Soviet, Egyptian, and Saudi torture. But interrogation systems designed to compel victims to sign false confessions supposedly provided the model for protecting America in the new millennium.<\/p>\n

In a July 2007 executive order, Bush offered a \u201cgood intention\u201d definition of torture. Bush stressed that interrogators are prohibited from \u201cintentionally causing serious bodily injury\u201d and \u201cacts intended to denigrate the religion, religious practices, or religious objects of the individual.\u201d Bush banned \u201cwillful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person … would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency, such as sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Former Marine Corps Commandant Paul X. Kelley condemned the new guidelines for encouraging abuses: \u201cAs long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not \u2018done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual\u2019 \u2014 even if that is an inevitable consequence \u2014 the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in \u2018willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse.\u2019\u201d Georgetown University law professor David Cole noted that Bush\u2019s order \u201cappears to permit cutting or bruising a suspect so long as the injury does not risk death, significant functional impairment or \u2018extreme physical pain,\u2019 an entirely subjective term.\u201d The key portion of the executive order \u2014 the list of approved interrogation techniques \u2014 was kept secret. Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch observed, \u201cAll the order really does is to have the president say, \u2018Everything in that other document that I\u2019m not showing you is legal \u2014 trust me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks to this legal framework, none of the deaths that occurred during interrogations by U.S. government agents were homicides. Instead, they were simply accidents, regardless of how much force was used or how many bones were broken<\/strong>. The CIA made tapes of its vigorous interrogations but destroyed them, even though a federal court had ordered their preservation. Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to appoint a special counsel to investigate possible crimes because \u201ccertifications were given\u201d by the Justice Department which absolved the CIA agents \u201cwho permissibly relied on it.\u201d Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) derided this position \u201cas the Nuremberg defense…. I had authorization and therefore I\u2019m immune from prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Bush torture policymakers got away with their crimes \u2014 thanks in part to President Obama betraying a campaign promise and issuing a blanket exoneration for interrogation abuses.<\/p>\n

A license for tyranny<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>reedom cannot survive such impunity. The government uses strict liability to judge companies and industries that deal with hazardous substances. With this standard, an individual can be found liable even without proof of negligence or reckless behavior. The more force a government official uses, the more he should be judged by a strict liability standard.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The more power a person seeks, the less credit his unverifiable intentions deserve<\/strong>. Politicians and the media encourage people to judge rulers by the same standard used for aunts and uncles. But good intentions are far more dispositive in private life than in political life. This is especially true of high-ranking government officials, who almost always avoid vigorous courtroom and congressional examinations of their conduct \u2014 much less depositions.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeant well\u201d is sufficient apology for bone-headed birthday presents but not for the destruction of rights and liberties. The Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution to protect Americans against politicians who claimed good intentions. Nothing has happened in the subsequent centuries to justify giving any politician a good intention license for tyranny.<\/strong><\/p>\n

James Bovard is a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of the ebook <\/em>Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty<\/a>, published by FFF, his new book,<\/em> Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty, and nine other books.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Good Intentions License for Tyranny by James Bovard \u201cHe who saves his country violates no law,\u201d tweeted President Trump in February. He was echoing a line often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. His supporters were electrified by Trump\u2019s tacit invocation of a right to boundless power. The Trump presidency is already spurring legal battles across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,4596,3041,38,12,708,4595],"class_list":["post-21693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bush","tag-good-intentions","tag-napoleon","tag-obama","tag-torture","tag-trump","tag-tyanny"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Good Intentions License for Tyranny - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Presuming that government officials always have good intentions becomes a license for tyranny.\" \/>\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\/2025\/06\/30\/the-good-intentions-license-for-tyranny\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Good Intentions License for Tyranny - 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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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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. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21693"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21741,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21693\/revisions\/21741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}