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Ashcroft has old-school approach to new challenges
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John Ashcroft, former U.S. Senator as well as attorney general, has been featured in congressional hearings on use of torture during his tenure at Justice. Democrats have stressed the immorality of torture, in particular waterboarding, while Republicans rejoin that such painful practices have prevented a second 9/11.
Old-school Ashcroft has been courteous but also blunt that political posturing in this forum does not help national security. Democrats have emphasized memoranda condoning torture, drafted at least in part by Justice staffer John Yoo and pressed on Attorney General Ashcroft while hospitalized. Ashcroft refused to approve the memos, but in the hearings sidestepped criticizing former colleagues.
More important than such politics, in reality the United States is moving away from condoning torture. The U.S. Army recently revised Field Manual 2-22.3 "Human Intelligence Collector Operations" to include the explicit prohibition of torture and other abuse. A proposed version of the manual would have included a classified how-to section on use of torture. That proposal was rejected.
Historically, the United States has played a major role in developing the laws of warfare. During the Civil War, Francis Lieber of Columbia Law School, a military adviser to President Abraham Lincoln, wrote a treatise on the subject. The document, promulgated in 1863 as General Orders 100, was used for half a century. The orders described the rights of noncombatants, partisans, prisoners and spies, along with prohibited weapons such as poisons. The Lincoln administration, which unleashed enormous military force against the economic infrastructure of the South, also sought to limit unnecessary cruelty and destruction.
Professor Lieber knew combat first-hand. A German veteran of the Napoleonic wars, one of his sons fought for the Confederacy while two served in the Union Army. The Confederate was killed; another son lost an arm.
The American example encouraged the 1899 Hague Convention on "Laws and Customs of War on Land," followed by the Geneva Conventions. During World War II, Allied leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt emphasized applying the laws to war, which in turn led to substantial expansion of the Geneva Conventions in 1949.
In 1972, I graduated from the Army's Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning, Ga. There was considerable concern about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Lt. William Calley, leader of the platoon involved, was under house arrest on the post, convicted of murder.
One training film, a low-budget effort from earlier in the war, showed an American officer forcing a peasant to go into a tunnel ahead of him. After the lights came on, our instructor noted that such behavior was no longer condoned. A more contemporary color film featured a heroic black sergeant. When his commander tried to send a peasant into a minefield, this Pentagon Sidney Poitier volunteered to go instead. The audience laughed, an appropriate reaction to such implausible melodrama. The Army nonetheless was trying to communicate a very valid point, however heavy-handed the approach.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military was suffering terrible morale, drug, race and discipline problems, directly related to Vietnam. Recovery took a long time.
That unconventional revolutionary war presented distinctive problems, requiring in turn a special emphasis on ethics as part of the antidote. John McCain, tortured as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton prison, has been outspoken in opposition to torture of prisoners. Barack Obama has a similar view.
John Yoo, now a law professor UC Berkeley, is usually mentioned in the media in connection with torture. However, his 2005 book "The Powers of War and Peace" develops the importance of the rule of law, international as well as domestic, in armed conflict.
— Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of "After the Cold War," (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan). He can be reached at acyr@carthage.edu.
Posted by laura_54321 on July 23, 2008 at 7:09 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I'm really not sure what the point of this piece is.
Posted by shaver_one on July 23, 2008 at 7:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
mm:
Your comments are contradictory...for a neocon (lol).
Bill Clinton left office with America thriving...a major budget surplus. George Bush came to office and plunged the US into a budget deficit.
Oil increased from $31/barrel to $147/barrel earlier this month. It has since dropped to $129/barrel.
Home mortgages were attainable, until GOPer Phil Graham led the push to deregulate the Mortgage Industry. Now, houses are not only unaffordable, but mortgages are also unattainable,
Taxes were stable,until Bush began borrowing heavily from China...a policy that will leave our great-grandchildren still paying off this massive debt.
Republicans must live with blinders on...not to see what the conservative "free-market" approach has brought us.
GOPers warn of a 'nanny' state. They fail to recognized that we now live in a 'big-brother' state.
Posted by Citizen on July 23, 2008 at 11:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)
This article is more of a history lesson than an opinion. Refreshing! Tired of everyone's opinion, but history is interesting.
Posted by nelsonknows on July 23, 2008 at 3 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Three points
1: I personally know John Ashcroft as I was the sound engineer at the 76 Music Hall in Branson MO where John Ashcroft performed with the Bacon Family Music Show several times. A.G. Ashcroft and I have had several conversations on law and politics and I found him to be engaging and polite even when we disagreed on a subject.
2: When Professor Cyr refers to torture, I assume he is referring to waterboarding. I find it amazing that the subject of waterboarding even comes up in the mention of torture because frankly, I've been there and done that and I have that t-shirt. I was waterboarded in SERE School at Camp MacKall North Carolina during Army Special Forces Advanced Special Operations Techniques training (ASOT). Waterboarding is just one of the techniques used at SERE to train and prepare Special Operations in what they may be faced with if captured by an enemy because, frankly, no enemy the U.S. has faced, since the Adoption of the Geneva Conventions, has adhered strictly to Geneva Conventions Protocol. If waterboarding is so evil, why is it perfectly acceptable to waterboard our own troops?
3. Why is it that when the U.S. uses advanced interrogation techniques on three members of Al Qaeda who have forfeited Geneva Conventions protection, do people that oppose these techniques refuse to be outraged at the brutal torture, mutilation and murder of U.S. service people in Iraq and Afghanistan? (unless you are a J.A.G. please don't bother trying to argue Geneva Conventions, I taught Geneva Conventions protocol at Ft. Bragg as an 18A)
It is obscene that anyone cries and frets over waterboarding of three terrorists to obtain information that might just save your children's lives but these same pundits have no opinion when U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors are captured, tortured, their bodies mutilated beyond recognition, their eyes gouged out and their genitalia cut of and stuffed into their mouths!
Posted by sslocal on July 23, 2008 at 3:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Oh snap!
I concur nelsonknows.
Posted by mikeb6804 on July 23, 2008 at 4:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
nelsonknows -- I'm with you 100%. And I appreciate your service. Thank you.
I was listening to a talk show one day (I think it was Roger in San Diego)and on the show were two other service members who had been waterboarded. One stated, "Waterboarding is not torture. It is harassment at a very high level."
Posted by laurarmc on July 23, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)
nelson is a loon, you should all be ashamed of yourselves for degrading the reputation of this country by advocating torture, and when the article says:
"More important than such politics, in reality the United States is moving away from condoning torture."
He misses the salient fact that we had to move toward torture first, and we can thank the Bush administration for that.
And in my fondest dreams they all end up in prison for war crimes.
Posted by dingo_designs on July 23, 2008 at 8:59 p.m. (Suggest removal)
nelsonknows, Thank You for your service.
People like laurarmc wouldn't know anything about service to her country or honor or sacrifice. I'd bet that when those soldiers were tortured laurarmc was celebrating. It too bad that while our military is protecting us people like laurarmc couldn't be left out and they'd have to suffer whatever the enemy gave them.
laurarmc, how dare you talk to a veteran like the way you posted to nelsonknows. You are not worthy to lick the spit off any of our veteran's shoes. A loon is a shrieking, screaming bird without much value to anything much like laurarmc.
Posted by mikeb6804 on July 23, 2008 at 10:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)
laura--your opinion is worth less than nothing. Don't tell a vet who has been through it as a matter of training that he knows nothing about it.
Posted by nelsonknows on July 23, 2008 at 11:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)
mike, laura is naive enough not to understand, waterboarding was used during the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G.H.W.Bush, Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations. Waterboarding is nothing new but sycophants such as laura don't seem to have a problem with waterboarding being conducted under a Democrat administration, it's just that she hates George W. Bush.
Posted by laura_54321 on July 24, 2008 at 7:16 a.m. (Suggest removal)
dingo and mike:
I don't know nelson, and I have no idea if he's ever served in uniform.
But if he did: you know who else did? WIlliam Calley. Lyndee England.
It's shameful to hold a uniform up as a shield for inhumanity. It debases the service of honerable men and women.
So yeah. Shame on all of you.
Posted by dingo_designs on July 24, 2008 at 1:29 p.m. (Suggest removal)
laura_54321 is just another screaming bird who hates the military and claims anyone who has ever served is a phoney because they represent something she will never understand. It must be strange living in a world a world where you live with pretty little pink and blue thoughts on one hand and hating others who protect her rights on the other.
If laura54321 has kids she can choose not to protect them but I thank God every day for the brave men and women who protect my kids so laura54321, shame on you for wanting to put my kids in danger.
Posted by nelsonknows on July 24, 2008 at 5:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Where is laura's outrage about American soldiers being mutilated? We can certainly see which side you are on laura yet your First Amendment rights are still being protected, you see, I didn't pick and choose who I was defending when I served in combat, my goal was to do my best to protect all Americans from harm, even you.
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