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• Tuesday, January 13, 2009 09:00 AM

  @intheevent

  Good question. Some of these people have been kidnapped and tortured by us. If they were not nuts before, then they could very well be now. What do we do with them? Maybe we just let them go. Maybe we owe them reources to help them get back to some semblance of sanity. Maybe we owe them nothing but a "bummer dude" here is $50 and a plane ticket back home to Pakistan (or detroit in some cases). Whether they are guilty or not, many (maybe most or all) simply cannot be effectively tried under US law because we kidnapped and tortured them.

  Actually, a treaty signed and ratified by the United States, formally known as the Convention Against Torture, and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment (CATCIDT), specifies that we owe them investigations, prosecutions, punishments, and reparations. It's pretty darn specific.

  And we can't just get by with "resources to help them get back to some semblance of sanity." They have the right to sue us: to pay for this and get out of their lives. One does not ask a torturer for psychoanalysis, one goes to a different shrink.

  This is why we owe them the investigations, prosecutions, and punishments. Because, like most international law treaties, this one is not "self-implementing" in the U.S., and requires suits to be filed under the Torture Victims Protection Act, which, of course, requires that the crime of torture be established, doesn't it?

  Barack Obama has come a few steps in our direction. But, as Glenn cited Anthony Romero, the devil is still in the details, and the refusal to commit to investigations when there have been both formal accusations and informal admissions of torture is, unless rectified, a shredding of international law, and our Constitution with it: We assert, as a nation, that the CIDT part of the treaty is amply covered by our Constitution, so if that part of the treaty is violated with impunity, our written and signed assertion implies that our Constitution has been so violated as well.

  What Mr. Obama needs to be made to realize is that failure to investigate is actually a breach of our international committments -- it's a cover-up -- no matter how politically awful the consequences of meeting those obligations are. We will breed Chuckie Taylors that way, just as much as the Iraq War has bred terrorists.

  Have you noticed how much weaker the Geneva Conventions are in Gaza, after 8 years of Bush? That's our fault, and our problem, our new president's problem, to correct. Impunity breeds impunity, and pretty soon you have the Mai Mai or the Janjaweed because of an American who didn't want a heavy political fight.

  —ondelette Read ondelette's other letters
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