“If Americans torture and it comes to light — as it inevitably will — it embitters and alienates the very people we need most.“
Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.
Some of the most hard-hitting and cogent responses to former Vice President Cheney’s advocacy for torture come from the American military. As the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer has reported, Former Marine commandant Krulakhas been passionate in his opposition to torture and met with then-candidate Obama prior to the election to explain why.
In a Miami Herald oped published on September 11, 2009, Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar, another influential general, took Cheney to the woodshed for his insistence on promoting torture. Their language is unequivocal. “In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas — and his scare tactics,” they write.
Gen. (ret) Charles C. Krulak
They go after Cheney point by point. Torture didn’t provide useful intelligence. To the contrary, the best information was obtained “by professional interrogations using non-coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.”
What torture did accomplish was staining our honor and the values that American armed forces stand for.
Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking matters into their own hands. They protect our nation’s honor. To argue that honorable conduct is only required against an honorable enemy degrades the Americans who must carry out the orders. As military professionals, we know that complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. Moral equivocation about abuse at the top of the chain of command travels through the ranks at warp speed.
And far from making us safer, torture recruited more people to the forces that attack Americans. “Repudiating torture and other cruelty helps keep us from being sent on fools’ errands by bad intelligence. And in the end, that makes us all safer.”
Well worth reading in full…