Progressive Wednesday

Guantanamo, torture, Khalid Mohammed, the death penalty, and you.

February 12th, 2008 by Matt

Hey kids (and fellow adults), I’ve got to use ye ole platform here to make a brief mention about torture and the death penalty. In case you missed it, the latest and the not-so-greatest goes like this:

Military prosecutors today issued the first charges relating to the September 11 attacks, saying they would seek the death penalty against six detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, including the alleged mastermind of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The Department of Defense, which is leading the prosecution through a controversial and much-criticised process of military commissions, issued 169 charges against the men that include conspiracy, murder in violation of the law or war, attacking civilians, destruction of property and terrorism.

I know. I know. If these guys were behind the 9/11 attacks, then it seems like they deserve to be treated like the festering roadkill they are. Two problems:

1. Some of the information obtained in regards to these detainees likely came about thanks to waterboarding, and we know that some of it definitely came about through other methods of torture (read on and you’ll see what I mean).
2. The death penalty is, in all instances, amoral.

Okay, stay with me here. The right we as Americans value above all others is the right for all people to own their respective lives: this is the greatest liberty of them all, and the liberty without which no other liberties can apply. Since life is the greatest liberty of them all, it must be universally applied: simply because someone isn’t American doesn’t mean we, as Americans, should value their life any less. If a society values life as much as ours does, then even those monsters who may “deserve” the death penalty actually deserve to live. Since we believe life is the greatest liberty of them all, then we should never deny it to anyone through our justice system, even those who may have denied it to others.

The emphasis there is “may have” for a reason. We now know that information has been gathered at Guantanamo Bay through waterboarding. According to Dr. Bryce Lefever, a navy command psychologist, waterboarding, a method of illegal torture, goes like this:

You’re strapped to an inclined gurney and you’re in four-point restraint, your head is almost immobilized, and they pour water between your nose and your mouth, so if you’re likely to breathe, you’re going to get a lot of water. You go into an oxygen panic.

But waterboarding and other methods of torture isn’t only legally wrong, it’s tactically wrong, because, according to Steve Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve colonel and expert in human-intelligence operations, they “produce false leads and hazy memories.” And we know that similar tactics were used against Abu Zubaydah, the guy who fingered Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the leader of the 9/11 attacks. What did they do to Abu Zubaydah? According to a 2006 article in the New York Times, U.S. captors “[blasted] the Red Hot Chili Peppers at top volume, [stripped] Zubaydah naked, and [made] his room so cold that his body turned blue.”

We’re fighting a so-called “War on Terror” by using methods of terror. We’re willing to kill people to demonstrate that killing people is wrong. Our logic is, at best, backwards, and at worst, horrifying.

What can you do? Three things:

• Write a letter to your editor. To find your local paper online, click here.
• Call your Senators and Representative. Click here for your Senators’ digits. Click here to find your nine-digit zip code, and then click here to reach your respective member of Congress.
• Join Amnesty International. Simply click here.

None of the three are cure-alls, but each is a start in a respectable direction.

Photo c/o this photographer.