55 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 4 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 4/14/09

Obama's Search For A Moral Compass

By Melvin A. Goodman  Posted by Marji Mendelsohn (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 1 pages)   5 comments
Message Marji Mendelsohn

Originally published in The Public Record at:

http://pubrecord.org/commentary/830-obamas-search-for-a-moral-compass.html

Some countries never acknowledge their crimes. It has been 95 years since the Turkish genocide against its Armenian population, but the Turkish government will not confess to any role in crimes that were committed. The Japanese have never admitted the terrible crimes committed throughout Northeast and Southeast Asia during World War II. And Israel has refused to acknowledge its numerous crimes against the Palestinians, most recently in Gaza, where Israeli soldiers committed grave violations of international law by deliberately attacking civilian targets and failing to protect the civilian population.

We know that the United States has committed crimes that violated the 8th Amendment of the Constitution against “cruel and unusual punishments;” the War Crimes Act of 1996; the Convention Against Torture of 1984 (the United States is a signatory); and of course Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. President Obama’s handling of the war crimes of the United States in facilities in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Iraq, and Afghanistan is particularly troubling because his administration has admitted that crimes were committed. He has condemned torture and abuse, closed CIA secret prisons, and ordered the closing of Guantanamo within the year. 

 

Attorney General Eric Holder stated bluntly in his confirmation hearings that “waterboarding is torture.” CIA director Leon Panetta has done the same, and the CIA has conducted no extraordinary renditions since Panetta replaced General Michael Hayden as CIA director. Extraordinary renditions amount to enforced disappearance, which is also a violation of international law. Panetta also has announced that the CIA will no longer use contractors to conduct interrogations and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining black sites.

We have paid a terrible price for these crimes according to General officers who have served in Iraq; they believe that U.S. use of torture and abuse is the major incentive in the recruitment of Arab fighters to Iraq in order to conduct their own acts of terror, including suicide bombings.

But the president has stated that the United States “must look forward, and not backward,” and CIA director Panetta has proclaimed that CIA officers who conducted torture and abuse in CIA secret prisons “should not be investigated, let alone punished.” The deputy director of the National Security Agency and a former CIA senior officer, John Brennan, has lobbied aggressively at the Justice Department and the CIA against any release of documents that deal with CIA’s interrogation program and its policy of extraordinary renditions.

Brennan was President Obama’s first choice to be CIA director, until the appearance of numerous articles that traced Brennan’s role as a cheerleader for “enhanced interrogation techniques” and extraordinary renditions. Finally, CIA has taken no action against CIA officers responsible for the willful destruction of nearly 100 tapes of torture and abuse against terrorist suspects, and Panetta has retained as his deputy director, Stephen Kappes, who was the ideological driver for the worst of CIA’s techniques and programs.

The CIA’s crimes are no secret, having been fully documented by Mark Danner in the “New York Review of Books,” Jane Mayer and Sy Hersh in the “New Yorker,” and Dana Priest and Barton Gellman in the Washington Post. We learned about CIA’s “black sites” in 2002; the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib in 2004; and FBI protests against CIA torture and abuse in 2006. We know that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and CIA director George Tenet endorsed and encouraged these measures.

Numerous reports, including the Taguba Report in 2004, the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the forthcoming report of the Senate Armed Forces Committee have fully documented the crimes. The recent Spanish preparation of a case against six lawyers with the Bush administration, including attorney general Alberto Gonzales, will lead to more revelations as will the inquiries taking place in Britain and Poland.    

The stature of international law is diminished when a nation violates it with impunity. The stature of a nation is diminished when it commits crimes against humanity. And the national leadership is diminished when it ignores the need for accountability and explicit repudiation. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has called for a “truth commission” to gather information on U.S. detention and interrogation programs.

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Christopher Bond (R-MI) have endorsed a similar investigation of CIA programs as well as an “evaluation of intelligence information gained through the use of enhanced and standard interrogation techniques.” This would represent a good start, but only President Obama can restore our moral compass on the crimes of the post-9/11 era. The judgment of history will be harsh if he chooses not to do so.

Melvin A. Goodman,a regular contributor to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”

 

Must Read 1   Interesting 1   Valuable 1  
Rate It | View Ratings

Marji Mendelsohn Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Marji Mendelsohn has been studying the effects of religion on politics and foreign policy with a secondary interest in election fraud.
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact EditorContact Editor
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

"Rove is orchestrating a fix for the 2008 election"

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend