We must not let fear destroy ideals, torture should never be an option

Column by Derek Brown

Fear can affect humans in unusual ways. It can lead you to think irrationally, and it can bring your ideals and values into question. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States was fearful. The past administration allowed this fear to derail us from our core values of unalienable rights. Through prisons such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and other CIA black sites, the U.S. government tortured and abused the human rights of suspected enemy combatants. Thankfully, this embarrassing chapter is drawing to a close.

The idea of the U.S. torturing its detainees is absolutely sickening. If we are to believe that we hold ourselves to a higher moral standard, we cannot resort to heinous acts such as torture. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge defended these actions recently in an interview with the BBC. “They had no loyalty to a country so they’re not the traditional prisoner of war, they don’t wear the uniform of a country so we can’t treat them as we have done in previous wars,” Ridge said.

This idea is absolutely absurd. They’re not fighting for a country, therefore they are not entitled to any protections of the Geneva Conventions? Is that the idea? Regardless of what they are fighting for, they are still humans and deserve to be treated accordingly. Furthermore, we decide how we treat prisoners. Stating that we “can’t” treat these prisoners as we have treated prisoners in the past is absolutely false. Why not? Why were things so different? The answer is because we were attacked on our home soil and began to think irrationally because we were blinded by fear.

The United States, as a world leader, set a poor example of how to detain foreign suspects. A country that prides itself on due process denied this right to many of the detainees. I don’t understand how this could happen. In America, we are always told that suspects are “innocent until proven guilty.” How can we deny these people the right to defend themselves in a trial?  The fact that we abandoned our ideals with the world watching, because we were scared, is disappointing and unfortunate. I know the circumstances were difficult, but if you do not stick to your ideals in hard times, what credibility do these ideals even hold?

On top of these “enhanced interrogations” being completely outrageous and against everything we stand for, the fact is, they did not work. In some cases they were even counterproductive. Last week, the Washington Post highlighted the case of Abdallah Al-Ajmi, a detainee who was released from Guantanamo in 2005. “The worst torture to me is that the guards made fun of my religion and dishonored the Quran,” Al-Ajmi said. Once again, a complete disregard of what this country was founded on. Freedom of religion is arguably the deepest-rooted value we hold.

Al-Ajmi was being held on suspicions of being a low-level Taliban fighter, but after living through hell at Guantanamo, he grew into a bitter and damaged individual, more bent than ever on waging jihad against America. Following his release, on March 23, 2008 Al-Ajmi drove a pickup full of explosives into an Iraqi army outpost. This is what makes President Obama’s goal of closing the Cuban prison so difficult. After mistreating these individuals for so long, in many ways we have made the enemy stronger and more deeply entrenched with hate for the U.S.

Supporters of the “enhanced interrogations,” or torture, will argue that it has kept us safe. They say that we have not been attacked again and therefore it was worth it. Count Dick Cheney among one of the proponents for the controversial counter-terrorism methods. In February, the former vice president was still spreading fear. “When we [elect] people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” he told Politico.com in an interview. The thing that Cheney and other advocates of torture don’t understand is that abandoning our values and beliefs hurts us far worse than any terrorist attack ever could. If we do not have firm, rock-solid beliefs to stand upon, then America will crumble. How can we continue to lead into the future if we forget what we stand for? In Obama’s speech to Congress last Tuesday, he addressed this very point. “[I] will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists, because living our values doesn’t make us weaker. It makes us safer, and it makes us stronger.”

America is going to be tested again in the future. Another terrorist attack is a very real possibility. Hopefully we can prevent future attacks, but if we are so unfortunate as to suffer another terrorist strike, we cannot let fear creep back into our decision making. We must stay rational and stand beside our core beliefs. Last Tuesday, Obama made a bold statement saying, “I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.” Hopefully this will be the case from now on.