No Prosecution for CIA Torturers

[sleigh]

President Obama has said that "those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice... will not be subject to prosecution".

I find myself with a mixed reaction to this. I applaud the administration's statements that torture will no longer be tolerated: it's about time that the United States returned to obeying our own and international laws and stopped being a rogue nation. Yet... the "get out of jail free" card bothers me. We have been both twisting and ignoring law in supporting torture methods, and now no one will be held accountable for those actions? That seems wrong.

Yet... I can see Obama's point here. People were acting on advice from legal counsel who claimed that our law supports these techniques. It seems fair not to prosecute those who acted in response to such advice; who acted, as it were, in good faith that their actions were indeed legal. My hope, though, is that in not prosecuting the agents themselves, the administration will go after those higher-up in the chain of command who drafted and created these memos, who authorized the torture methods, who told those agents "Go on -- we've got your backs."

It's one thing to say that from now on we're going to follow the laws that are in place. It's another to fail to punish those who chose to ignore the law in the first place, and who in doing so tarnished and despoiled the reputation of our country.

Comments

[richrichmond.livejournal.com]

it is a tough call. on the one hand you have the idea that ignorance of the law is no excuse. regardless of if these folks were acting on "good faith upon legal advice" maybe they should have made up their own mind if they thought that it was wrong. On the other, your superiors are telling you yeah this is OK lets do it. Should they have followed faith in their bosses or faith in their conscience?

Do you not prosecute the officers in a prison who beat prisoners because the warden told them to do it and that it was OK? What about Nazis at concentration camps who were "following orders"? or those guys in that tom cruise movie? they got off on their murder charge because they were "following orders" but got nailed with conduct unbecoming.

i think many struggle with their reaction to this because it does seem like a "free pass" I think some want to support Obama so much that it may be OK. I wonder if this was Bush or McCain saying this if peoples reaction would be "they are just letting their oil buddies off the hook!!"

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

The difference between a guard beating a prisoner and this is that the guard should clearly be aware that the beating is illegal, and in this situation the CIA agents are specifically being told by Justice attorneys that the techniques they're being asked to employ are legal. There's a (subtle) difference between following orders that are legal and following orders that are illegal.

But... even if the CIA agents are legally untouchable, they are still morally culpable.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a moral sticky wicket. On the one hand, "I was just following orders" wasn't a viable defense at Nuremberg. On the other hand, there's a difference between Eichmann and the rank-and-file Nazi soldiers.

(Oh dear, I've invoked nazis. I automatically fail the internet.)

There's a pragmatic side to this as well. Unless he wants to dissolve the CIA (and undo decades of network-building) Obama needs to be able to continue to work with the organization.

It does need a housecleaning, though. But part of the way you nail the guys at the top is by making it safe for the guys further down the ladder to speak up.

According to the article, the White House seems disinclined to pursue the matter, preferring to put it in the past and move forward. I'm of mixed feelings about that. I do think that a clearer message of "You need to use your heads, people!" should be sent (via a couple of firings, at least). On the other hand, I am philosophically in favor of not wasting time trying to change the past, but instead pushing forward and trying to do better.

I hope at least a number of firings come out of this. Anyone who approved the torture shouldn't be allowed to work for the government anymore, and anyone who demonstrated a little too much enthusiasm for following these orders should be looked at very carefully.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I agree -- the matter needs to be pursued. Leave the people who followed orders they were told were legally acceptable alone, but get the people who wrote those memos.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I agree -- it's the higher-ups who need to be prosecuted here.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

I would like to think that I am the sort of person who would say No Way! if my superiors told me to go electrocute that guy a bit to make him talk. I really want to believe that I am that sort of person, and yet in the dark corners of my mind, I have to admit that I can't be so certain of my integrity unless it was put to the test. I say this from the position of a person who has put herself in physical danger on the behalf of strangers more than once. But I'm a coward, really. I do these things because I have to, because this is how I was raised to be. And I still don't really know what I would do, if I were in that place.

I read the Milgram Experiments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) back when I was getting my degree and it really shook my certainty about myself, because I know I'm one of those people who really likes the rule of law and all that. What do you do, when your own moral imperative is being over-ridden with people who supposedly have greater authority than you do? What do you do when leaders of your country are reassuring you that what you're doing is no worse than the average fraternity hazing, and is vital to national security?

I don't know what I'd do, and that's why I'm glad there's some measure of grace for these people. The people who authorized this stuff, the people in authority however-- hangin's too good for them. They abused not only the people they ordered to be tortured, but the people they required to torture others, and the trust of the entire country.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Yes, that, too is the problem. I think one of the lessons we can take from the Milgram study, though, is that people in these situations need to know that they are not weird, and they aren't supposed to follow orders that contradict the moral compass.

Part of the way you can instill that in people is by heavily publicizing the notion that there will be repercussions for people who don't take personal responsibility for their actions.

This certainly would put people in the terrible position of "Rock, meet hard place," having to choose between their career (and by extension, their role or purpose in life), and their conscience. And so we should hold up the example of things such as McCarthyism, which eventually collapsed precisely because people started saying, "Go ahead and kill my career, but you are still an asshole and I will not knuckle under to you."

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I think we'd all like to believe that... and yet research would seem to indicate that most of us would not refuse. I just read THE LUCIFER EFFECT by Phillip Zimbardo. He's the psychologist who oversaw the famous Stanford experiment back in the 70s, and in this book he looks at that, at other studies (like the Milgram ones) and then turns to Abu Ghraib.

He would argue that most people will obey orders from a perceived authority figure, even if reluctantly.

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

I'm a boomer. I remember the whole country getting upset about Lt. Calley massacreing Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. The upshot of the whole incident was a general consensus (which eventually spilled over into actual military regulations) that it was not only permissable to refuse to obey a direct order you thought was illegal/immoral, but mandatory.

Given all that, and being able to understand Obama's point, I agree that it's the higher-ups who should be prosecuted. All the way up to Bush and Cheney themselves. Too late to impeach? Try them for violent crimes.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

You're right -- a soldier is supposed to refuse to follow a command that they believe is illegal, but in this case, the people giving the orders were providing 'proof' that the procedures were in fact legal, which gives the scenario a much harder twist.

As for going higher in the food chain to prosecute... I'd be all for that.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2009/04/response-to-glenn.html) is worth reading.

B

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much in total agreement.