Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (34 page)

There’s no desire to know that people die during torture and that some commit suicide. And now we read of evidence that some of those whom our government has claimed committed suicide actually were murdered by American torturers—usually CIA agents.
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The agents who destroyed evidence of their torture did nothing wrong, according to the Obama administration, and will not be prosecuted.

The old ruse is to ask what if you knew someone had vital information that, if revealed, would save American lives. But this is purely hypothetical. One can never know that for sure. If you had a strong suspicion that there might be such evidence, using persuasion and a justified approach is preferable. The evidence shows the odds are greatly increased that vital information is more likely to be gained in this manner.

The question that supporters of torture refuse to even ask is, If one suspects that one individual out of 100 captured has crucial information, and you don’t know which one it is, are you justified to torture all 100 to get that information? If we still get a yes answer in support of such torture, I’m afraid our current system of government cannot survive.

Many terrorist suspects arrested in the past ten years have been caught because of paid informants. Accusing your enemy of terrorism gains you a bonus check from the U.S. taxpayers and lets the agents of torture have a field day. Of course they claim falsely that this can only happen on individuals captured outside the United States and held in indefinite detention without counsel and without the right of habeas corpus.

Quickly the argument then becomes: These aren’t people or citizens deserving the protection of our Constitution; they are enemy combatants. And who defines an enemy combatant? The President or the Attorney General can do it without judicial overview, and this applies to American citizens as well. Though only a couple of American citizens have been thusly treated, a precedent has been set just in case there’s political disturbance in the United States.

It’s not difficult to believe that American citizens might become vulnerable to the charge of supporting terrorists for merely challenging our foreign policy and claiming to understand why thousands, if not millions, of Muslims around the world would like to do us harm.

It looks like secret prisons, clandestine rendition, unlimited detention, and torture are all still part of our policies. No effort has been made by the new administration to investigate charges of misconduct in the previous administration. Protecting state secrets is just as strong a policy today as it was in the last administration.

The supporters argue that we must not be rigid in protecting the civil liberties of those who have been arrested as suspects; such information is of tremendous benefit in preventing attacks in the United States. The protorture fanatics were outraged that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the twenty-year-old from Sudan, was not tortured to extract vital information regarding any future plans to attack us. Subsequently, though, the Obama administration said that they were getting information from him with less violent means.

The odds of extricating any significant information from him were utterly remote. The evidence is clear that information
obtained from torture is rarely if ever of any value. Those suffering severe mental or physical pain will say whatever they think the torturers want them to say. There is concrete evidence that a more humane method of persuasion yields more information than physical torture does.

The real tragedy is that sadistic cruelty is contagious and dehumanizes those who employ torture. Sadism begets sadism. The “need” for torture and the acceptance of it comes from unabashed fear, insecurity, and ignorance. For a single individual like the “underwear bomber” to intimidate an entire nation demanding his torture is not an encouraging sign for the future of our country. Yet there was no torture, and so far no events could have been prevented by employing it.

For those who still care about our laws and international law (United Nations and Geneva Conference), all torture is illegal. The American government claims that the rules are different because we’re in a “battle zone” and any information is urgent. Of course today the war, though undeclared, is everywhere in the world, which allows capture and a chance of torture in any country in the world, including the United States.

It is this argument that provides that anyone—including an American citizen—can be declared an enemy combatant and thus be denied any rights of habeas corpus and eventually tried in a military court.

The image of Americans torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo circulated around the Muslim world has done unbelievable harm by the hatred it generated against all Americans. It’s going to take a lot of time to alter that sentiment, and it won’t happen without a change in our foreign
policy and our assumption that we can arrest anybody anywhere in the world at will.

General Barry McCaffrey, not exactly an outsider, commented on our torture program: “We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.” The ACLU and many news sources estimate that at least 100 detainees died as a result of torture while in American custody. Our government has tried to downplay those deaths as suicide. So far there’s been no effort to hold accountable the individuals responsible for this travesty.

For a society that condones torture of suspects involved in fighting our occupation of their country, it is not a great leap to accept torture of any criminal gang member here in the United States. The door has been opened more than a crack for this attitude to spread. What I fear is if or when the political system deteriorates due to a growing economic crisis, the cries for strong law-and-order policies could cause secret renditions and torture to come to the United States.

The clandestine activities of the FBI, the CIA, and all sixteen of the intelligence agencies is something that is so massive and secret even presidents have a hard time understanding to what extent they operate. To oppose their authority is considered by many in DC as unpatriotic and un-American. This is not a good sign for America. A better understanding of civil liberties is urgently needed in all levels of our government. The message should be that torture is simply wrong and doesn’t work. Torture is more un-American than those who oppose it.

Paul, Ron.
A Foreign Policy of Freedom
. Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 2007.

Salon Staff. “The Abu Ghraib Files.” March 14, 2006.
Salon.com
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P
rotectionism is related to military Keynesianism in that many supporters of militarism are also champions of sanctions and blockades. True, a lot of protectionists thoughtlessly push protective tariffs purely as a job program meant to protect noncompetitive domestic industries and do not support them for military reasons. But what they don’t accept is that trade and friendship diminish chances of war with other nations, and protective tariffs are actually harmful to the American consumer. The moral hazard of protectionism is that the less efficient will not be motivated to become more efficient in order to survive. Complacency and inefficiency set in.

Sanctions and blockades are extremely dangerous and should be considered acts of war. This policy was a prelude to our unwarranted and illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. There’s reason to fear the same will result from our trade barriers against Iran.

Blockading the Palestinians in Gaza has proven to be a dangerous and inhumane policy that has precipitated a worldwide condemnation of Israel. The result has been to make the
region much more dangerous. It has undermined the Israel-Turkey friendship that has served both East and West for decades. My contention has always been that our interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East is good neither for us nor for Israel. I’m now more convinced of that than ever.

Sanctions and protectionist measures are always a catastrophe. Believing they are beneficial leads to complacency and false expectations for their success, both economically and for solving geopolitical problems. Many members of Congress falsely believe that strong sanctions are an alternative to war instead of a precursor. Even members who are part of the unofficial antiwar coalition almost always support sanctions, even though they see themselves as strongly opposing war as a solution.

What they fail to see is that blockades for whatever reason can be enforced only through violence and even killing. This moves the countries involved closer to outright war. Iraq is a good case in point: Sanctions were imposed through the 1990s and then the real war followed. Trade and friendship moves the opposing nations in the opposite direction.

International trade organizations such as the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, and others are supported by many proponents of free trade and are universally opposed by protectionists and labor unions. The stated purpose of these organizations is to set rules and arbitrate trade disputes between members with the goal of minimizing trade restrictions and tariffs. And there is evidence that some tariffs have been lowered through these agreements. There’s also strong evidence that the trade organizations just as often give permission to retaliate against another country for certain trade infractions.

I consider myself the most “radical” free trader in Congress, but I do not vote for these international trade organizations. The process by which these agreements are passed is flawed. Generally, fast-track legislation is passed by Congress, and congressional authority over foreign commerce is transferred to the executive branch. The office of the President then negotiates with groups of other countries the details of how to lower tariffs or gives permission to retaliate against another member for unfair trade practices.

The only way the executive branch should be directly involved is to draft a treaty to be ratified by the Senate. Generally, this is an obstacle if the President is required to get two thirds of the Senate to agree. It’s easy to get a majority of each party to give approval to fast-track legislation. Since the Constitution is clear that Congress has the responsibility for foreign commerce, I don’t believe the President should even attempt to regulate foreign trade by treaty. The President already has vast authority with veto power over what Congress might pass.

These trade agreements become instruments for international government entities to regulate trade without explicit consent of Congress. They literally undermine our national sovereignty, and that of our states as well, with rules. Too often the rules handed down can be beneficial to large international corporations while harming or ignoring the small companies unable to defend themselves against the giant bureaucracy serving the special interests.

Too many supporters of organizations like the WTO are not true free traders even though some groups who pride themselves on free market economics are strong defenders of
these organizations. Countries that won’t lower tariffs hurt their own people more than anyone else, since tariffs are a tax. If a foreign country subsidizes a product and goods become cheaper than our own, it’s an economic boon for the domestic country. Our country then has more money left over to increase our standard of living by purchasing other products. The political challenge, of course, is that our domestic industries must adapt. But in a free market economy they are required to adapt for all kinds of reasons that might enable their competitors to be able to produce at a lower cost and provide cheaper goods for the consumer. The consumer is the “special interest” in a free market—not protected corporations or big labor.

Many of the professed free traders in Congress who get their credentials by supporting all trade agreements are frequently the strongest supporters for sanctions against countries such as Cuba, Iraq, Iran, and Korea. This position mocks the principle that nations that trade with each other are less likely to go to war. The truth is, some may well understand this and believe in this principle, but it’s war they seek. Too often, that is what they get. Stopping all flow of oil to Japan in early 1941 was a significant factor in the attack on Pearl Harbor later that year—something most Americans are not interested in hearing.

I personally like to defend free trade in much more direct manner. I believe everyone has a right to spend his or her own money any way they see fit, whether it be on foreign or domestic goods. If tennis shoes from China cost $20 but $100 if manufactured in the United States, why punish the poor for the sake of protecting domestic industries?