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Nicholas Kristof writes in reg...,
2003-03-04 00:00:00
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2003-03-05 00:00:00
The USG is
insisting
it won't use torture on terrorism suspects but shoots itself in the foot when it
keeps insisting it can legally torture at will. As one US official says, "God only knows they're
going to do with him". I don't believe for a second that they have any serious
compunctions about using torture, and
niether does the
government.
I have problems with the use of torture
on terrorism suspects because a)
information extracted under torture is suspect, that its use in Saudi Arabia
confirms this,
and which may very well be demonstrated by cases of
false information being
the basis for terror alerts; and b) they are suspects. There should at least be some modicum
of due process - and military tribunals would hardly provide a modicum in my mind - to authorize the use of
so-called "discomfort" to extract information. Lord knows the analysis
used by the USG to legitimize its other policies, such as their budget predictions and the WMD
claims used to justify war on Iraq, are shoddy enough to call into question their claims about "known" terrorists.
One should consider taking
a more principled stand,
but the
practical case ought to be sufficient for anybody.
I don't see a real reason not to have a trial to establish that the evidence against a suspect is sufficient
to classify them as a suspected terrorist - before the use of such ostensibly limited torture -
under the jurisdiction of a civillian judge. Except that such procedures might help push the "war on terrorism" out of the
distorted contortions of our policy that only target US enemies and leftist activists, and would extend
constraints over the definition of
terrorism enforced by the government - which is part of the worry on part of human rights and civil liberties
activists: the definition is easily over-extended, as it has in the past and has in specific cases since 9/11,
to target people engaging in non-violent resistance, minorities, and otherwise innocent people for no good reason.
There should be oversite by qualified civillian authorities, and there isn't any for foreigners and nothing
impressive about the government's case against citizens.
A quick list of some reports of "terrorism" suspicions - clauses of the Patriot Act - being used to target harmless people:
badgering the telecom industry for information
on US citizens;
police harassment of
flyer campaigns and
people who have gas cans in their car;
putting activists on
no-fly lists,
greens on no-fly lists, and
people who read the wrong books on no-fly lists;
using plainclothes saboteurs against non-violent marchers
with cameras; FBI targetting indymedia and
harassing dissenters;
declaring sit-ins a terrorist act;
2,000 'disappeared'
and thousands arrested en masse;
yadda
yadda.
Also, with respect to the Khamid Muhammad story, I think there's serious questions to be made
with respect to how this reflects
on the "war on terror".
The parade of commentators on the cable news lauding this as proof that
we can have our cake and eat it to are overlooking reports that a) this is a based off a lucky break
from an undisclosed tipster: "Sources tell Time
that agents had been led to his hideout through the earlier arrest of an Egyptian in Quetta who had been in contact
with Mohammed. Neighbors, wary of the lone Arab who appeared in their working-class area, tipped off the police,
hoping for a reward.";
b) the ISI is the one that
actually snagged him; that c) it's possible the ISI is trying to protect terrorists when they can
because; d) the ISI is itself an extremist organization that is cooperating with the US only so much as it needs
to protect itself from serious retalliation and retain its control over Pakistan - the ISI's support for anti-terrorism
is half-hearted and apparently motivated
in part to garner support
for keeping the Shi'ites in northern Pakistan
under control; and e) this probably suits the hawkish USG because terrorism can be and is being used
opportunistically to legitamize and fuel support for unrelated and criminal foreign policies, such as the Iraq invasion and
US operations in Columbia, nevermind allowing them to push through a Republican domestic agenda that
the population
doesn't support.
:: posted by buermann @ 2003-03-04 00:00:00 CST |
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