Torture Us No More America

How much scarier can America get? Now there's a partisan fight breaking out between Democrats and Republicans over treatment of top Bush Administration officials who authorized 'coercive' interrogation techniques in their 'war on terror'. Many of us are worried that this political storm could engulf Obama's ambitious agenda, knocking desperately needed action on climate, healthcare and banking regulation off into a second term (aka The Wild Blue Yonder).

The torture issue could also have an impact on Obama's foreign policy if he sidesteps what many view as a clear case of illegality by some agents of the United States. Spanish prosecutors may end up doing what he will not - prosecute the decision-makers behind these misdeeds, and in the process undermine the amazing amount of goodwill he has inspired around the world.

Americans need to grapple with the political meaning of the torture allegations, just as much -- or more -- than the legal and moral implications. The deep-rooted sense of 'exceptionalism' that teaches many in the United States to see their democracy's laws as inherently superior to international law lays traps for the nation's foreign policy into which even President's of Mr Obama's intelligence can fall.

A nation that valorizes, even reifies, individual liberty to the extent that America does has to extend those liberties universally - not because it is a moral affront to say that American liberties are more valuable than those of an Egyptian, or a Canadian -- but because if America is an exception to the rule of international law, praise be the gods, so are we all. Like the legitimation of nuclear weapons because you're The Good Guys, believing it's okay to take away liberties of life and limb because you are the defenders of liberty negates the political legitimacy that is at the root of your claim. In the international sphere, political claims are increasingly founded on moral consistency, a fact that is a fact no matter how exceptional you may think you are.

It would be more valuable to Americans, and to us all, if the country spent time deliberating on the meaning of this fact as it pertains the country's foreign policy. How are one's particular interests to be advanced if one cleaves to a strong moral code of universal human rights? This is an interesting question for a superpower, an edifying question.

And a question that would, in all likelihood, be submerged and silenced if a show trial of the 'Bush Six' were to proceed. For Mr Obama - the right path is probably political and historical inquiry, not legal mumbo-jumbo.

(For a legal interpretation from the international standpoint, check out this article from The New Yorker in which the views of my old friend (and QC) Philippe Sands are featured. He is spearheading efforts to charge members of the Bush administration with war crimes under international law.)