Panel: Torture tactics hurt U.S. moral standing

“It’s an appalling failure of the American political constitutional view,” visiting Wilson School professor and former U.S. attorney Harry Litman said in reference to American violations of international law in its treatment of suspected terrorists.

Litman added, “If one finds a government that was willing to invade Iraq in flagrant violation of U.N. convention, it’s not all that surprising that they don’t give a damn [about] the Geneva Convention ... and [about] the United States Constitution.”

Jonathan Strassfeld ’09, who organized the panel for the group Antiwar Students at Princeton, said in an e-mail that “the panel was held to raise campus awareness” about the torture scandal.

Though torture is just one of America’s policies the group opposes, “when you talk about America’s current war policy I think it can be said that, to an extent, it all comes back to torture,” Strassfeld said.

“For America to reclaim its moral standing, we must come to terms with what we have done; and this requires we look backwards to shine light on what Vice President Cheney called ‘the dark side,’ ” Strassfeld added.

In the discussion, Litman explained that “the overarching story” in the torture scandal is how the United States has not exercised its responsibility to adhere to international rules of engagement.

U.S. irresponsibility in this matter started at the top of the military chain of command. “There’s an incredible amount of obfuscation being done by people in high places,” Litman explained.

International Law Committee chairman for the New York City Bar Association and panelist Scott Horton agreed that “the introduction of these [coercive] techniques was from top-down pressure.”

He cited evidence that senior military officials had pushed for torture methods at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay in 2002. He added that the interrogation techniques had been approved by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld ’54 very early on in the war on terror.

The official story that frontline investigators were unable to gather intelligence and, as a result, properly requested permission to use coercive interrogation techniques was “a crock,” Horton said, citing the timing of Rumsfeld’s approval.

Horton added that because certain government officials recognized that “these techniques are criminal, and people who used these techniques faced the prospect of persecution,” these officials conspired to produce a “get out of jail card” that would eliminate the legal consequences. “That makes the situation worse: a joint criminal enterprise,” he explained.

Panelist and Rutgers law professor Roger Clark said the torture scandal exposed “a policy recipe for disaster.”

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Clark also noted that the story of “a nefarious band of scheming executive officials ... concocting an immoral policy” was only one part of the scandal.

The panel discussion was preceded by a showing of “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary about an Afghani detainee who was killed by American soldiers.